RAMALLAH, July 18, 2011 (WAFA) – Israel violates the rights of Palestinian minors from the West Bank when it arrests them and puts them on trial in military courts, Monday said a report by an Israeli human rights group.
Israel had arrested 835 Palestinian minors between 2005 and 2010 and tried them in Israeli military courts in the West Bank on charges of stone throwing, said the report by the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem.
It monitored violation of the minors’ rights in Israeli courts and prison, as Palestinian minors are charged with “criminal offenses” and tried under an Israeli military legislation applied in the West Bank, “which grants them very few of the special rights relating to persons their age and doesn’t conform to the international and Israeli law.”
Consequently, the minors are not always separated from adults during detention or imprisonment, given the right to consult with attorney, or allowed to have parents present during interrogation, said B’Tselem.
Only one minor of the 835 was acquitted and the rest were found guilty; 93% of the convicted were given prison sentence by the Israeli Military Youth Court empowered to hear offenses committed by minors in the West Bank, said the report.
B'Tselem interviewed 50 minors who described the events from the moment they were arrested to the time they were released from jail. Thirty of the minors said they were taken from their home by soldiers in the middle of the night and that their parents were not allowed to accompany them, and two were not questioned until five days later.
Five of the minors said that soldiers made a point of awakening them if they fell asleep while waiting for the interrogation. Nineteen also said they were treated violently and were threatened during the interrogation, and 23 said that they were not allowed, for many hours, to perform necessary functions, such as going to the bathroom, eating, and drinking.
B’Tselem explained that contrary to the Israeli law, the military justice system does not have an alternative to remand until the end of proceedings. In the vast majority of cases, the judges order to hold the minor in custody until the end of the proceedings.
Only 17% of Palestinian minors who were prosecuted in 2009 and 2010 were released on bail pending their trial. As a result, many minors prefer to enter into a plea bargain, in which they confess to the charges against them in exchange for a shorter sentence, fearing that, if a trial is held, they would be kept in jail during the long period of time that it takes to complete the trial.
Imprisonment sentence, rather than an alternative punishment, is the principal penalty chosen by the Israeli military courts, ranging from a few days to 20 months. About 60% of convicted minors under age 14 were given a prison sentence, despite the fact that under the law in Israel incarceration of minors under age 14 is prohibited, said the report.
B’Tselem said that convicted minors are considered security prisoners and not allowed access to a telephone, and most of the minors interviewed in the report were not visited by their families.
The report added that the prison authorities also enable them to study only some of the subjects they were taking at school, which reduces their chances of successfully completing the school work for the year and of being promoted.
During their imprisonment, most of the minors interviewed by B'Tselem were not visited by their families.
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