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International Human Rights Witnesses Arrested in HaresSaturday 21 Sep 2002
author: womenspeacepalestine.org (iwpspalestine@netscape.net.)
summary
On September 19th two members of International Women's Peace Service and a volunteer were detained and threatened with deportation by the Israeli police at Ariel police station, in the Occupied West Bank, after witnessing unprovoked and therefore illegal shooting by Israeli soldiers. The village had been placed under curfew at 6:45 a.m. on September 18, without warning and without provocation (no incidents or violence from within the village had been reported).
Israeli Defense Force jeeps rode through the village announcing by loudspeaker that people should stay in their homes or risk being shot. Later that afternoon, IWPS members witnessed and videotaped soldiers firing rubber bullets and live ammunition in the middle of the town and smashing windows with rocks.
At approximately 1:45p.m. on Sept. 19th two members of the IWPS, Mariam Bhaba, a Canadian citizen, and Claire Peak, a British national living permanently in the United States, as well as Joan Phelan, an Irish volunteer, heard and saw Israeli soldiers shooting into a residential area of Hares from a road about 100 meters away from the (blocked) main entrance to the village. Claire reports:
When we reached the scene we saw one Israeli Army jeep and an Israeli police jeep stopped on the side of the road. We approached the soldiers and asked them why they were shooting live ammunition into a residential area. They replied that "some children had thrown stones." We asked them if they had felt that the 'alleged' throwing of stones had warranted their responding with live fire (only permissible, according to the Geneva Conventions as an act of self defense in the case of clear and immediate threat to life). The soldiers now refused to say anything. It is worth pointing out that there was no sign of any stones in the area around them, nor was there any indication of any damage to their vehicle or themselves. There were however over 20 spent bullet casings lying on the road around their feet. We also asked the soldiers if they thought that they had h it anyone, and if anyone had gone out to check the area they had been firing into to see if there were any injured people. Again, they ignored us.
We approached the policemen in the second vehicle, and asked one of them about the shooting. Shimon Dahan (this was the name later given to me) got out of the jeep denying that there had been any firing. When we showed him the spent casings at the feet of the soldiers he proceeded to collect up the casings and throw them away into the field by the side of the road. Mariam told him that he was destroying evidence. He became very angry and screamed, "Yes, I'm destroying evidence, so what" in her face.
...He told us to show him our passports. We handed them to him and he took them and gave them to another policeman who remained in the vehicle. At this point, Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights drove past and stopped to help us. One of the soldiers noticed that we were trying to discretely record the event, and told Dahan, who then immediately demanded that we give him our cameras. We refused. He tried to take my camera from my hands, more police were on the scene by this time and they began to surround us. We again refused to let go of our equipment and Dahan then told us that if we did not give him our cameras he would arrest us. We asked him on what grounds, but he refused to answer and arranged for us to be split up and put into jeeps. We refused to let them split us up, and insisted that Mariam, the one they had tried to single out, who is a Canadian Muslim and wears a ve il, remain with us. Without telling us that they were arresting us they placed us all in one car and drove us to the illegal Jewish-only settlement of Ariel. Arik Ascherman followed us there.
At the station we again asked if we were being arrested, but were told that we were being 'detained'. Arik came in and at that point the police demanded his passport and told him to wait outside and not to speak to us. Policeman Dahan, accompanied by others, again came over and demanded that we give him our cameras and this time, also our phones. They told us that we were not being arrested yet but that we had to hand over our equipment. Eventually we complied. Then two female officers approached us and told us to follow them. We did so and we were led, without warning, to a small bathroom where we were told to strip. We complied; one of us particularly was however very distressed at the demand.
We asked whether, if we were not being arrested, we had the right to leave. We were told by Dahan to be quiet and that they had the right to hold us for 6 hours without having to give a reason. Another policeman said 24 hours. After another twenty minutes, Mariam was called up to the desk by Dahan and told to sign a document that he had prepared. The document was in Hebrew, but with some parts also in Arabic. Mariam told him that she did not speak Arabic or Hebrew. Dahan became very hostile, telling her that she was lying and that he'd seen her reading an Arabic prayer book. She took it out of her bag to show him that it was also written in English and he snatched it from her hands. She quickly snatched it back. She refused to sign the form.
Both Joan and I were also called up individually by Dahan and told to sign forms in Hebrew. We both also refused on the grounds that we could not understand what was written. After this we were eventually led upstairs along with Arik. We again were told to sit and wait to be questioned. Arik was questioned first, on being let out he told us that he had been told that he was not allowed to speak to us.
...Each of us was read our rights and told that we were being charged with two charges:
Incitement to Riot on the grounds that the policemen had determined that we had provoked some children into throwing stones in order to film the soldiers firing back!
Obstruction of a police officer in the course of his duty - no particular reason was given for this charge
Each of us denied the charges completely. Although Dahan took, or tried to take, a statement from each of us regarding what we saw happen, in no case did he in any way question us further regarding the information we gave on the soldiers firing into a residential areas or Dahan's destruction of evidence. He did not seem to regard us as potential witnesses to any crime of unprovoked shooting, or use of excessive force by soldiers, nor of the
destruction of evidence by a police officer on duty. In my case, I asked him if I had been doing anything illegal in filming the incident. He told me that no, technically filming an officer on public duty was not in any way a breach of the law.
We were each given two choices: to sign a paper agreeing to stay out of the West Bank for a given period of time, or, to refuse to sign and be transferred to a military holding unit until such time as we could be deported. It is interesting to note that although we had each been charged with the same 'crimes', we were given different, and thus seemingly random, notices, ranging from 15 days to 180 days. It was not made clear that this was in any way 'punishment' for any 'crime' we had committed, in fact, the whole procedure of our being charged was henceforth not mentioned. We each signed the documents. None of us were allowed copies of the document (which were in Hebrew but which were attested to by Arik) neither were we allowed copies of our statements.
We were told that we had to leave the area immediately and that we could not return to the house in Hares even to collect our belongings. The belongings would have to be brought to us on the outskirts of Hares by someone else. We were finally released from the police station after about 7 hours. We collected our belongings from Angie and left for Jerusalem with Arik.
A joint statement about our experiences and further information is available from IWPS: Tel:- +972-(0)9-2516-644. Mob:-+972- (0)55-376-204 iwps@palnet.com; http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org
In the U.S. contact Kate at 510-666-1376/510-381-1287 (cell)