Today in a military court in Israel, the "trial" of Nabi Saleh activist Bassem Tamimi heard testimony from police officer Moshe Madyuni, an interrogator in the Israeli police's Central Unit. Tamimi is charged with organizing Palestinian youth into "brigades" during the protests against Israel's confiscation of land from his village of Nabi Saleh, in the West Bank near Ramallah. The case against him is built upon the witness testimony of two minors, 14 and 15 years old. Moshe Madyuni admitted today that these two witnesses were improperly interrogated with no access to their parents during their incarceration. Maduni was the lead interrogator of both the boys, Islam Dar Ayyoub and Mo'atasem Tamimi.
During his testimony today, the officer said, "Usually, a minor is supposed to be interrogated in the presence of a parent, unless in obstructs the interrogation or if the minor does not want [his parents presence]. In this case I didn't bother with it – the suspects were brought in from the Territories, so of course we didn't have any contact with his parents […] I don't remember a single case in which we questioned a minor from the Territories in the presence of his parents.”
Israeli law requires that a minor have access to their parents during their questioning and be interrogated only by certified youth interrogators. The boys in this case were questioned by four investigators, and among whom only Maduni is a certified youth interrogator. However, Maduni testified today that he did not follow the youth interrogator protocols saying, “I am a qualified youth interrogator, but as a rule, on a day to day basis, I don't serve as one […] I know the basic guidelines [for interrogating minors] more or less.”
More or less meant that the boys were denied sleep, not informed of their right to remain silent, denied legal counsel and denied access to their parents during questioning. In a motion filed to rule one of the boy's testimony inadmissible, it was shown that the interrogation of the young boy violated Israeli law in the following ways:
Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep.
He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is "expected to tell the truth".
Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator.
So a leader of Nabi Saleh's nonviolent resistance to the occupation, has been held for over nine months so far and is on trial based on the coerced evidence extracted from two children who were abducted from their homes in the middle of the night.
In an earlier diary, I reported that Israeli human rights groups had concluded that Israeli military courts have a 99.7% conviction rate of Palestinians. It is impossible for a Palestinian to get a fair hearing in a military court. The abuse of detainees, including children, in Israeli prisons is well-documented. At a meeting of an Israeli committee investigating abuse of children in the military courts, expert witness, child psychiatrist Dr. Graciela Carmon testified about techniques she witnessed in videotaped recordings of child interrogations that included sleep deprivation, shackling of children in uncomfortable positions for hours at a time, and complete isolation from family or any adult they could trust. Additionally, most detentions take place in the middle of the night. She concluded:
Bassem Tamimi's arrest follows a pattern of Israeli targeting of Palestinian popular struggle leaders. Tamimi is accused of organizing youth during the weekly nonviolent protests in Nabi Saleh. The court has charged him with' incitement', 'organizing and participating in unauthorized processions',' solicitation to stone-throwing', 'failure to attend legal summons', and a scandalous charge of 'disruption of legal proceedings', for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
Tamimi does not deny organizing youth to protest nonviolently. In an opening statement at his trial, he pleaded “not guilty”,
but proudly owned up to organizing protest in the village. In a defiant speech before the court he said, "I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people." Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that "Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws [...] that are enacted by authorities which I haven't elected and do not represent me."
Nabi Saleh is a village of about 500 people. The Israeli government has confiscated much of the villages land for the Jewish settlement of Halamish and has denied access to Nabi Saleh's only source of water. For two years, the villagers have engaged in nonviolent protests of the occupation. Last week, the Israeli army killed a member of the Tamimi family, Mustafa Tamimi, during the Friday protest when a solider shot Mustafa at close range with a high velocity teargas canister.
In an interview with Max Blumenthal a year ago, Bassem Tamimi said:
We have experience in military resistance but we decided the best way to resist was nonviolent. We want to build a model that looks like the first intifada, an alternative to military resistance. Our village knows exactly what to do because we were involved in the intifada. And the reason the army wants to break our model is because we are offering the basis for the third intifada.
For my whole life most of the Israelis I met were soldiers and interrogators. But when we started the popular resistance in 2009 I began to see that there were some Israelis who had removed the occupation from their minds. Like Jonathan [Pollack], who was the main person to bring Israelis and internationals here in the beginning. So we became friends.
The occupation is continuous in Israeli society and this is why they lose — because they try to force us to accept them as an occupier, and that will never happen. We don’t have any problem with Jewish people. Our problem is with Zionism. We don’t hate them on the other side; we simply demand that they end the occupation of their minds. The separation between us is between different ways of thinking, not between land. If we change our ways of thought and remove the mentality of occupation from our minds — not just from the land — we can live together and build a paradise.
This I believe.