Email: right2edu@birzeit.edu | Phone: 0097(0)2-298-2059
Defend Omar’s right to education and liberty
Defend Omar’s right to education and liberty: demand his release on 31 July and raise your voice against the arbitrary detention of Palestinian students.
Omar Qassis, arrested on 27 March, forbidden from seeing a lawyer for one month, given Administrative Detention in May, denied permission to see his family until now. Demand his release on 31 July!
In the middle of the night of the 27 March 2008, at around 3am, Hanna Qassis was woken up by a loud thump at the door. When he went into the living room he saw 7 soldiers standing in his house. His mum had opened the door. A soldier who appeared to be the Commander and spoke in broken Arabic, asked who else lives in the house. Hanna, the eldest in the family after his father passed away, said his brother also lives there. He was told to go and wake him up.
Once Omar got up and joined his family, the three of them were locked in the balcony of the house which was guarded by a soldier, while other soldiers searched the house. After 10 minutes, the Commander returned and took Omar into another room for questioning. Hanna could hear their conversation and heard Omar repeat many times that he did not know what they were looking for. This questioning went on for about 5 minutes until the Commander came back into the balcony and asked Hanna to give Omar some clothes – Omar was under arrest.
Omar asked his brother to also get him some money for the taxi-ride home after his interrogation, as he believed he would be home later the same night, knowing he had not done anything wrong and had nothing to hide. This seemed to annoy the Commander, as he interrupted:
“You will go home whenever I decide to write this on my own hands.”
Looking for a charge
Despite Omar being from the West Bank and it being illegal under international law for Israel to transfer him into another territory, he was taken to Mascobia Detention Centre in West Jerusalem, where neither his lawyer nor his family were able to see him. It is common practice that lawyers must apply for permission each time they want to visit a detainee in the detention centre and this process commonly takes 8 days. A week later, on 3 April, Omar’s interrogation was extended for 19 days and the lawyer was officially forbidden from seeing him. On 21 April the interrogation period was again extended for another 18 days. On 23 April, the lawyer won his appeal against the ban and managed to see Omar. He also appealed against the extended interrogation period and managed to lower it to 9 days. The first hearing on Omar’s case was set for the 29th April, at Ofer military court, near Ramallah.
Despite being held without access to legal counsel for a month, which put Omar at high risk of being subjected to torture, the head of interrogation at Mascobia applied for a further 30 days of interrogation as they did not have anything to charge Omar with. The lawyer appealed the extension and won; the Israeli army was given 2 days after which they had to produce a charge sheet.
On 1st May, an administrative order was issued by the Deputy Military commander of the West Bank putting Omar under 3 months of Administrative Detention. He was also charged with throwing stones some time between 2001 and 2002 to which he pleaded ‘not guilty’. The charge of throwing stones does not involve a specific day, making it impossible for Omar even to refute the allegations and provide an alibi, thus denying him the right to a proper defense. He is also being tried as an adult for something he allegedly committed as a 16-year-old, which under international standards means he was a child even though the Israeli military courts treat Palestinians as young as 16 as adults.
Conditions of Detention
On the 17th of May 2008, Omar told the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University about his conditions while under interrogation and once he arrived in Ofer prison in the West Bank.
“I am O.K. but since my arrest my weight has dropped from 67 to 59 kilos. Since arriving in Ofer I have not been given enough sugar so I have been feeling dizzy and dehydrated, and I couldn’t sleep for the first 4 days. I had hemorrhoids which were painful but my requests to see a doctor were ignored. In the end I had to skip meals to be able to see a doctor.
The hemorrhoids developed while I was under interrogation because I wasn’t given any clean clothes and the solitary confinement cell I was in – ‘the hole’ – was really humid. I was in ‘the hole’ for 11 days. Also when they started interrogating me I was tied down to a chair while intelligence officers questioned me for 4 hours at a time. Some soldiers told me that I would get hemorrhoids from sitting down so much if I didn’t start confessing.
I also couldn’t sleep because of the mental distress I was under. I wake up easily, every time a soldier walks past. I saw soldiers beating other inmates and fear that I could be next. I’m also very disoriented, I hear sounds of dogs barking and people screaming at night. I think these are recordings but they affect me. I also heard a siren the other night and I imagined Israel was going to war with Iran and that they had evacuated the prison leaving me there alone. I have lost my bearings and am generally confused about the times of day or night.
The other day I cried. I cried at the sight of an old man, probably in his 60s, sitting alone and looking very fragile. I also know that he is diabetic. I can’t stand to see the injustice he is in, and even less to imagine the injustices he has seen.
Now that I am here in prison I am in less physical pain but I am still stressed at the uncertainly of it all. I have no idea how long I will be in prison. I have no idea what they are doing or claiming. All I know is that I’m not a threat to security but I was still being questioned about all sorts of things, so anything and everything is going through their heads.
I basically just want to know when I can see my family again.”
In mid-May, Omar’s mother and brother, Hanna, applied for permission to visit him in prison but by the end of May Omar had been moved to a prison in the Negev inside Israel. It took one month for the Israeli authorities to process the request and in mid-June, they heard the application was denied.
In Israel, prisoners are usually allowed family visits once every two weeks and by law, every month. Omar has been denied his rights to see his family, which effectively serves as further punishment – punishment for something, although he still doesn’t know what that something is. His family are also being denied their right to see him thus they – the family who are undoubtedly innocent – are also being punished.
Administrative Detention
Administrative Detention is a system of incarceration without charge, where secret evidence from the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) is shown to the military judge and used to justify incarceration for a period up to 6 months, on a renewable basis. The information provided by the GSS is not communicated to the detainee or to his/her lawyer. The mental suffering caused by not knowing the grounds for detention can amount to torture as defined under the UN Convention Against Torture and such lengthy detentions without charge or trial also constitute ‘arbitrary detention’ which are a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 9(1)) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 9).
In Birzeit University, there are ten students currently under Administrative Detention, one of whom will have been in Administrative Detention for 3 years next month. Students under Administrative Detention are not only subjected to mental torture, they are denied many of their basic rights such as the right to liberty, fair trial, and freedom from arbitrary detention, as well as their right to education.
Omar was in his last semester of a four-year course and had been studying every day as soon as he got home. “He was determined to finish his studies and to do well; honestly, I’d never seen my brother so committed to his studies as he was at the beginning of this year. It’s as if it was his New Year’s resolution” said Hanna. Now Omar will have to wait until next year to be able to graduate – that’s if his Administrative Detention order is not renewed.
Call for Release
The Right to Education Campaign calls on Israel to release or charge the prisoners in Administrative Detention, and not to subject people in their custody to acts of torture and to provide them with a fair trial, thus upholding its responsibilities under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention Against Torture, to which it is a signatory.
It also calls on the EU to make the upgrade of EU-Israel bilateral relations conditional on measurable progress by Israel to uphold the EU human rights standards in the occupied Palestinian Territories, as is required under the terms of the agreement – Article 2 of the agreement states:
“Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please demand for Omar Qassis to be released on 31 July when his current Administrative Detention order expires, and for it not to be renewed. Also demand for the other nine Administrative Detainees from Birzeit University to be released and for students not to be subjected to such arbitrary forms of arrest, torture and punishment.
* The Right to Education requests that all letters be written in a tone that is conducive to the aims of the appeal and do not include any abusive or unnecessarily aggressive language.
* Click here for a sample letter by a foreign student who studied Arabic at Birzeit University and who volunteered with the R2E Campaign in the summer of 2007:
Mr Daniel Friedmann
Minister of Justice
Fax: + 972 2 628 7757; + 972 2 628 8618
Mr Menachem Mazuz
Attorney General
Fax: + 972 2 627 4481; + 972 2 628 5438; +972 2 530 3367
Lt. Colonel Sharon Afek
Legal Advisor to the Israeli Army in the West Bank
Fax: +972 2 997 7326
Mr Ehud Barak
Minister of Defense
Fax: +972 3 697 6218
sar@mod.gov.il
The Commissioner for External Affairs and European Neighbourhood Policy
HE Ms. Benita Ferrero- Waldner
Email: relex-enpinfo@ec.europa.eu
Or send a comment via
* Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) states that “[t]he occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Israel signed the convention in 1949.
* Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment or Punishment states that: “[t]he term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, [or] punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed[…]”
* Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that
“Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.”
* Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”
* International Bar Association, Human Rights Institute
* The EU-Israel Association Agreement
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