An Open Appeal to John Key and Murray McCully – speak up for the Hares 5

Five Palestinian teenagers are facing life imprisonment for a crime that never happened. The boys are being blamed for a settler car accident and labelled "terrorists". We must demand justice for the Hares Boys: Ali Shamlawi, Mohammed Kleib, Mohammed Suleiman, Ammar Souf and Tamer Souf. While living under belligerent military occupation, and with no normal civil court procedure available to them, these boys are helpless victims of a military regime that is in daily violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. If the boys are convicted, this case would set a legal precedent that would allow the Israeli military to convict any Palestinian child or youngster for attempted murder when accused of stone-throwing. The boys are now aged 16-17 years. That five young lives should be ruined, with no evidence of their actual guilt presented and no access to a civil court free from military control, is a gross denial of justice. A message from Um Fadi, the mother of one of the boys, Ali Shamlawi, was read out to a meeting in London on 14 July 2014:

"I am the mother of Ali Shamlawi who was abducted by the Israeli Army about 27 months ago. He did not exceed 16 years of age when they took him, falsely accusing him of throwing stones. He was taken to Al Jalame interrogation centre, there he was subjected to the ugliest forms of torture and humiliation during the long hours of interrogation without a lawyer. He was deprived of food and drink and they did not let him to use the bathroom. For 21 days they tortured and threatened him, and caged him in a narrow and dirty cell in Al Jalame. Then they transferred him to Megiddo prison and indicted him on 25 charges including 20 attempted murders! They produced 60 witnesses against my son, yet not one of them saw anyone throwing a stone! My son has been deprived of his childhood and his studies and his family. They took him from my lap and deprived me of seeing him growing up.

This distraught mother has also written the following letter to an adviser:

I want to tell you that the prosecutor maybe sentence the boys 15 years and about 40,000 NIS for each boy. And they told us that if we did not accept this deal, maybe they will sentence the boys for 13 to 30 years and maybe to Revenge us they will sentence the boys Life imprisonment because they will change the indictment from attempted murder to Murder after the death of the girl. We Discuss the case with our lawyer Labib Habib and he told us what he did for the case , and the Israeli Can't proof that Ali is Convicted. Also, there is a contradiction in the testimony of all the witnesses. BUT, the judge and the prosecutor are our enemy and it is a military court. There is no Justice in Israel :(

The Lawyer leave the discussion for us (To choose the deal which is 15 years and that big amount of money, OR to continue the Hearings (Pleadings) but in this case no one know what will happen! Maybe they will sentence the boys between 13 to 30 years and maybe there will be Surprises, and the results are Unknown and not guaranteed. In the last court hearing when the prosecutor told us about that deal, he said : "This deal is a result of Labib Habib working, without the lawyer Labib discovery of those legal loopholes which prevented the Israelis from the boys condemnation, the prosecutor was never thinking of this sentence, they was planning to sentence the boys a sentence that is more and more than 15 years, BUT because of the working of Labib they gave us this deal". I'm in a big Confusion about what to do now? The next court hearing is at 27 August, and we must decide before this date. And the other 4 lawyers are thinking to accept this deal.

What do you think?

Love,

Um Fadi

Well, Murray McCully and John Key, after reading the facts (see below for more detail) pertaining to the plight of these youngsters at the the hands of the military force of an occupying power, will you please tell the world what you think – and what you will do about it? Will you demand that the occupying power release these five youngsters unconditionally? Or will you attempt to justify what Israel is doing to them?

An announcement by the New Zealand Government on its NZUN website states:

“New Zealand’s term on the Security Council will place us at the heart of international decision-making for the next two years. We are committed to being independent and providing a voice for small states. We aim to achieve practical results and to make a positive impact on international peace and security.”

The world awaits your response.

Signed:

Leslie Bravery (Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa New Zealand)

Marian Bravery (Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa New Zealand)

Roger Fowler QSM (Chair, Kia Ora Gaza)

John Minto

Tuma Hazou

Virginia Hazou

Billy Hania

Marjory Lewis

Janfrie Wakim

Paul Bravery

Lyn Doherty

Kate Sinclair

Clive Sinclair

Lois Griffiths

Martin Griffiths

Walter Muller

More detail:

The car accident

At around 6:30pm on Thursday, 14 March 2013, an Israeli settler car crashed into the back of a truck on Road 5 in the Salfit Governorate, in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. The driver and her three daughters were injured, one of them seriously. The driver, Adva Biton, was returning to Israeli Occupation settlement of Yakir when the accident occurred. The collision injured the driver and three of her daughters, one seriously. Adele Biton, then age three, suffered severe brain trauma before dying this February of pneumonia. The girls' mother later claimed the accident was due to Palestinian youths throwing stones at her car. The driver of the truck, having testified immediately after the accident that he had pulled over because of a flat tyre, later changed his story and said he had seen stones by the road. There were no witnesses to the car accident. Nobody had seen any children or youths throwing stones that day.

The arrests

In the early hours of Friday, 15 March 2013, masked Israeli soldiers, some accompanied by dogs, raided the village of Hares, which is close to Road 5. More than 50 soldiers smashed their way into villagers’ houses, demanding to know the whereabouts of residents' teenage sons. That night ten boys were taken prisoner, blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to an unknown destination. No explanation was offered to the families for the Israeli Army action. Two days later, a second wave of violent prisoner-taking took place. At about 3am the Israeli Army, accompanied by members of Shabak (the Israeli Secret Service), entered the homes of three Palestinian adolescents. They had a form with the boys' names written in Hebrew and, after forcing all the family members into one room, they took away their mobile phones and interrogated them. The Israeli soldiers handcuffed their sons, all aged from 16 to 17; “Kiss and hug your mother goodbye,” a Shabak agent told one boy. “You may never see her again.”

A week later, Israeli Army Jeeps again entered the village and arrested several boys, who had just arrived home from school. The soldiers lined up all of the children, one of them only six years old, and threatened their uncle at gunpoint. He pleaded for the soldiers to at least release the youngest children. The Army then randomly chose three boys, handcuffed them behind their backs, blindfolded them and took them away. The families were not informed about either their children's whereabouts or the allegations made against them. In total, 19 boys from the neighbouring villages of Hares and Kifl Hares were taken away in relation to the settler car accident. None of them had any previous history of stone-throwing. Following violent interrogation, most of the minors were released, except for the Hares Boys who remained in Megiddo, an Israeli prison for adults.

The interrogation

The captive boys were subjected to such abuse by the Israeli Army that it amounted to torture. Upon being detained, they were kept in solitary confinement for up to two weeks. One boy, since released, described his cell: a windowless hole 1m wide and 2m long; there was no mattress to sleep on, or blanket; toilet facilities were dirty; lights were kept on continuously, leading to the boy losing all track of time; the food he was offered made him feel ill. Denied a lawyer, the boy was interrogated violently three times daily over a period of three days. “When I visited him for the first time, he told me that they beat him all the time, until the blood was coming from his face and from his mouth,” said Um Fadi Shamlawi, the mother of one of the boys, Ali Shamlawi, in July 2014. “They did not let him sleep for three days,” she added, saying that her son’s jailors had isolated him in a small cell and denied him food and water during his interrogation. Ali made similar charges in a March 2014 affidavit to Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), recanting his confession and alleging Israeli interrogators had obtained it under duress. After a court appearance and trial, the youngster was found not guilty and released. Other boys gave accounts to their lawyers of very similar treatment while being held captive. Only after repeated abuse under interrogation in prison did they 'confess' to stone-throwing which, up until then, they had denied

The charges

The five boys from Hares are each charged with 20 counts of attempted murder, apparently one count for every alleged stone thrown at passing cars. The Israeli prosecution insists that the boys consciously “intended to kill”, demanding the maximum punishment for attempted murder: 20 years to life imprisonment. The prosecution case relies on the boys’ 'confessions' and the evidence of 61 'witnesses', some of whom claimed their cars had been damaged by stones that same day on Road 5. These witnesses appeared only after the car accident had gained much news media coverage as a “terrorist act” and after Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu had announced, after the boys’ arrest, that he had “caught the terrorists that did it”. Other 'witnesses' include the police and Shabak personnel who were not even present at the time and place of the alleged stone-throwing. It is not clear whether the 61 'witnesses' have been properly questioned and their claims verified by CCTV footage or hospital admission data. There is no evidence either that the alleged damage to vehicles has been photographed or otherwise documented. No such information has been made available to the boys’ attorneys.

ENDS

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