On Monday, Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar faced a military hearing at Ofer, an Israeli army base in the illegally-occupied West Bank. Jarrar’s only “crime” is speaking out against against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the rights of Palestinian political prisoners.
At the hearing Monday, the two witnesses brought by the prosecution (an army officer) before the judge (also an army officer) said that false confessions had been extracted from them by Israel under the duress of torture in Israeli detention. The prosecutor then farcically had the witnesses designated by this kangaroo court as “hostile” and was able to cross examine them.
This was a brave move by the witnesses, who were essentially forced to testify and will likely now face ominous consequences when they head back to Israel’s notorious prisons system, which habitually tortures its victims.
The Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, who has been covering the case for Haaretz, says that the case demonstrates again that the whole of Israel’s military court system (used almost exclusively for Palestinians, and not for Jewish citizens) is a “ridiculous costume party … a system where the judge salutes the prosecutor, who outranks him militarily”.
Continue reading over at MEMO.