A British journalist was recently released from a Gaza prison after being arrested by the Hamas authorities and held for a month. Paul Martin was the first foreigner to be detained in Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007. Martin was arrested on suspicion of serious security offences, as well as being in communication with Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. He was released without charge and shortly afterwards he came into our studio to discuss the dangers of covering the story in Gaza, along with senior CNN international correspondent Ben Wedeman. I first asked Paul Martin about the circumstances which led to his arrest.

Well, Fionnuala, it was a combination of unfortunate circumstances, in the sense that I had already to Hamas asking that I should be able to give evidence in the case of an individual who I’d previously been filming, I’d been making a story about. He had then been arrested, and I felt a moral obligation, as a journalist, to at least set out to the court what had happened, why he was making this film, and that he was clearly not making the film in some subversive role as some kind of spy, as they were alleging, because spies don’t go around being filmed by people, they do things quietly behind the scenes. So I was going to explain to them how it came about, why I was interested in this individual, and why he was a good story, why he was being filmed.

So you did this voluntarily, you volunteered to go to the court and testify?

Absolutely.

And what happened then?

Well when I got into Gaza, drove straight to the court, in the company of a Human Right’s Watch official, when I got to the court, handed in the letter, within a very short time I was summoned inside and told, ‘You are under arrest.’ Simple as that.

And to this day you’re not sure, or are you aware of why you were put under arrest?

Well I know what they then alleged after they put me in detention, kept me for 26 days, interrogated me, at first day and night, used all sorts of bullying tactics to try and get confession, as they put it, I know what they were alleging, but the basis of their allegations were so farcical and so ridiculous, and so easy to refute, that I’m not sure that this was the real reason.

Ben Wedeman, you spent considerable time and have considerable experience of Gaza, did you ever encounter problems, and if so, was it the Hamas leadership?

Well, anybody who works in Gaza is going to encounter problems, Fionnuala. Let’s remember that it’s an active war zone, it’s the Palestinians versus the Israelis, it’s Hamas versus Fatah, so you’re always going to have problems there. In general, my problems were not all were not with Hamas really, it was with Fatah. I was involved in the kidnapping which people widely believe, including myself, was probably orchestrated by senior leaders in the Fatah movement. I have had, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, Fatah militiamen point guns in my face and threaten to kill me, so Gaza is a very complicated place to work, but the dangers come from many different directions, and I think in general there is a tendency to focus on Hamas when it does things wrong, and sort of to give a sort of let Fatah and its indiscretions pass without too much notice.

Ben, in the run up to when Hamas took over in Gaza, a number of foreign journalists had been kidnapped for a time, and that’s stopped once Hamas took control. So how generally would you describe Hamas’s attitude to, first of all, international journalists, up until now, of course?

Well, their attitude has been certainly in the beginning after they took over Gaza in June of 2007, they were fairly welcoming; also in the problem is not necessarily the leadership, but it’s the rank-and-file in the street who don’t necessarily understand that foreign journalists will come to Gaza and be in touch with all sorts of people: Fatah people, people who might be thought of as collaborators with the Israelis, so, really it all depends who you’re dealing with.

Paul Martin, does what happened to you, do you think in your case that it was a once off, or is it a portent of a changing circumstances for journalists?

I think that Hamas initially, as Ben said, very much welcomed the idea of Western journalists coming there to show the plight of the Palestinian people and also because they wanted to show ‘We’re a party of law and order, and we can maintain order.’ There was chaos, there were kidnappings, there were attacks on people like Ben in the previous regime, and they wanted to show, ‘We’re strong, we can sort things out.’ But they started to realise that it’s a double-edged sword having journalists free to roam Gaza, because they can found out things that the authorities won’t necessarily like to be published, and, in my particular case, I had been covering subjects which, on occasion, brought me into conflict with their general line. For example, smuggling through tunnels, which everybody knew was taking place, so we filmed some of that, including weaponry going through tunnels. This wasn’t something they were pleased about, in fact it was raised by Dr Zahar, the foreign minister, as being defaming the Palestinian people.

And Ben Wedeman, I’m wondering about, we’ve been talking about international journalists, but what about the plight of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, your experience?

Well their position was much more difficult because we as international journalists, we come and go, we come under the name of organisations like the BBC, like CNN, and there’s a certain amount of hesitation to put pressure on us, even indirectly. Whereas I know that with Palestinian journalists who, many of them incredibly brave, they risk their lives on a regular basis, that they come under pressure, indirect and direct pressure on them and their families, sometimes not to do the sort of work that they would like to do, that they should be doing. So obviously they’re much more vulnerable than we are in these circumstances.

Paul Martin, finally a question, if whether or not this marks a turning point for journalists, what happened to you, I’m wondering if you had the option of testifying voluntarily again at a Palestinian’s trial in Gaza, would you be willing to do so?

Well I would certainly think twice. I do think it is a turning point, not necessarily meaning that every single journalist who tries to do any investigative reporting is going to automatically be locked up, I don’t think that’s the case.  But I think they are signalling that they don’t want Western journalists to step too far out of line, and I think they have now come to the conclusion that Western journalists need to be reined in – but not kicked out.

Paul Martin, Ben Wedeman, thank you both very much indeed.

….

By: Mohammed Suliman for Al-Monitor Palestine Pulse. Posted on January 29

GAZA CITY – Hamas caved to public pressure and on Jan. 28 2013 released six individuals, including four journalists, who were detained the previous week, on Jan. 21 and 22.

“Having received orders from Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the four journalists who were earlier arrested by the internal security apparatus in Gaza have been released despite the sensitivity of the charges,” announced Ihab al-Ghussein, the head of the Government Press Office in Gaza.

The journalists are Munir Al-Manirawi, executive director of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate; Mustafa Miqdad, chief editor in the Palestinian Media Group; Ashraf Abu Khsewan, a journalist with the Alkitab Channel and Jumaa Adnan Abu Shumer, a reporter for Sawt al-Huriyya.

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, members of the security force broke into the homes of the journalists, searched their belongings and confiscated a number of laptops and mobile phones. The journalists’ families said the arrests were carried out without official warrants.

The arrests came as Palestinians were expecting a unified government to be declared by the end of January.

Following strong public condemnation, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza issued a press release claiming that the arrests had taken place due to a “conspiracy which was being woven” by pro-Fatah, Mohammed Dahlan loyalists and “meant to hamper the process of reconciliation between the two governments in Gaza and the West Bank.”

In a phone interview with Al-Monitor prior to the journalists’ release, Interior Ministry spokesperson Islam Shahwan said the men were arrested because they had received funding from “suspicious sources” and worked according to a “solid plan” under the command of several security figures, all of them controlled by Dahlan, a former Gaza security chief.

The plan, Shahwan added, was meant to frustrate reconciliation efforts by “instigating disagreements, fabricating false news and rumors, and accusing the Fatah leadership in Gaza of being incapable and incompetent.” He denied charges that the arrests had no legal basis and that they had taken place without warrants.

“We stress that we support freedom of speech, and in fact, we always facilitate the work and movement of journalists in the Gaza Strip. However, this is not the case when a journalist works in order to serve certain political agendas. We noticed that following the good news about the musalaha, a few journalists have been trying to spoil the positive atmosphere by spreading rumors and instigating disagreements. We found out that they take orders from the Mohammed Dahlan leadership,” Shahwan said.

When asked for evidence linking the journalists to Dahlan, Shahwan emphasized that the Hamas authorities had “acquired information from intelligence sources of these people’s suspicious activity, and after, it had taken all necessary security measures, including issuing a prosecution order. They searched the suspects’ houses and detained them. During the interrogation, some confessions were made by suspects [including Al-Manirawi], and others who could not be proven guilty were let go.”

Sharif al-Nairab, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, told Al-Monitor that the charges were “unclear.” He added, “The syndicate strongly condemns the arrests, which are purely political and therefore unjustifiable.”

“We refuse all attempts to involve journalists in such completely political matters and in any conflict between Palestinian political parties. . . . We also refuse the government’s unfounded claims that our journalists work actively to hamper the reconciliation process. Hamas and Fatah should settle their differences by themselves. Although we have members in the syndicate who are from all different political parties, at the end of the day we are journalists. Other than that, we have nothing to do with the reconciliation or other political matters.”

Nairab added that no charges seem to have been brought against the journalists apart from numerous unsubstantiated accusations of having ties to Dahlan, which does not constitute a charge.

In addition to the arrests in this case, there have been several recent instances of journalists being summoned for interrogation at the internal security headquarters. Hussein Abdul Jawad Karsou, a journalist at Aswar Press, is one of them.

“When I presented myself at their HQ, they made me sit in a room on my own. They asked me all sorts of personal questions, like my name, my mother’s name, my wife’s name, etcetera,” said Karsou. “They also asked for my e-mail address and password. However, I refused to give them the password to my e-mail since this is something extremely personal.”

Before being discharged, Karsou inquired about the reasons for the interrogation, but was not provided an answer. Instead, he was told to present himself again, on Wednesday, Jan. 29, to learn the charges against him.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate had been planning to hold a press conference on Jan. 27 to shed more light on the issue. Upon receiving promises from security personnel that they would release the arrested journalists, the syndicate canceled the event.

The arrests and summons of journalists come several weeks after Hamas banned local journalists from working with Israeli media, suggesting a broad effort by the Islamist movement to tighten control over the media.

Mohammed Suliman is a Gaza-based writer and human rights worker. His writings have appeared on various online publications, including Al-Jazeera English, openDemocracy, the Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss. He tweets from @imPalestine

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/01/gaza-journalist-arrests-hamas.html#ixzz2JPkFRfnn

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It was a muted celebration.  Mohamed Abu Muailek wanted to mark the first year of his freedom from a jail cell by visiting Europe.  Instead he chose to have a Skype conversation, because he is unable to meet his friends and supporters in Europe, or indeed even in the West bank.

That’s because not a single neighbouring country has granted him a visa.  The Israelis in all probability still have him on a ‘terrorist’ list – even though he chose in late 2008 to reject his militant rocket-firing group and advocate peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians’ adversary.

As for the Gaza Strip’s other neighbour, Egypt: despite its much-publicised support for the Palestinian cause, the new Muslim Brotherhood-run administration has not normalised the country’s crossing point between the southern Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, the northern gateway to Egypt.

The Egyptian security service would probably grant Abu Muailek the right to travel directly from southern Gaza through the Sinai Desert to Cairo’s international airport – if he had a visa to go to a European country.  But he does not have one.

Britain has twice refused to grant Abu Muailek a visitors’ visa. though he was invited to address a highly-respected group of British lawmakers – the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues.

Despite this, Mohamed has set up a blog in which he has expressed his continued commitment to peaceful solutions.  And he has said he will apply to travel in Europe again and again – until he achieves success.

Finally, after many months of being cold-shouldered by potential employers in Gaza, worried that hiring this talented IT specialist would endanger their relationship with the dominant Hamas rulers, Mohamed has found work in his field.

In essence, though freed after a military trial that found him ‘not guilty’ of any wrongdoing, Mohamed is still in a form of imprisonment — inside the confines of the Gaza Strip.

And a memento of his two and a half years in prison has emerged.  A foreign photographer was allowed in to the prison where Mohamed had been held, and took a series of pictures of prisoners behind bars and in their cells.  Mohamed was captured in a few of them.  We publish two here – for access please email dissidentunderfire@gmail.com..

PM: No, I’m not willing to be attacked by you on the basis of all your false claims. So, what I’m saying to you is this: why don’t you look at my track record?  For thirty-five years, I’ve made films.  If you wanted to, you could make a list of films I’ve made which are very pro one side or the other – if you look at it from a propaganda point of view. The fact is, they’re all done accurately, and if the Palestinians do things which are wrong to their own people – I’m talking about the authorities – I will criticise that. If the Israelis do things, I will criticise that. And I have been, and I have done, and I’ve been criticised by all sides. Therefore, I think that my track record over thirty-five years of reporting, all round the world, would compare and contrast very well with your reporting for the Electronic Intifada.  Secondly, why does the Electronic Intifada attack every single Western news organisation? Yesterday, it was the Guardian you were attacking, then you had the New York Times you were attacking, then there was the AP, Associated Press in Gaza, that you were attacking; it was AFP. These are all stuff in the last few weeks that the Electronic Intifada has been attacking,.  And the BBC, of course. And so, all you’re doing is you’re looking for ways of saying: well, Western media is against us. Don’t know who “us” is exactly, but it seems to me that you’ve taken up the cudgels on behalf of one particular cause – and I think that it’s perfectly ok to take up the cudgels on one particular cause.  But just argue the case. Argue the case for your particular view of a one-state solution, or whatever it is.  Admit what you are: a bunch of propagandists.  And don’t attack the other media, who are trying to be decent and fair, and will naturally sometimes write stories that are in favour of one side, and sometimes it’s the other, as long as they’re accurate.   I’m a journalist, and you’re a propagandist. Thank you very much.

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Paul Martin, who has covered conflicts in the Middle East since he was a correspondent of the BBC in Cairo from 1978 onwards, has at times been attacked (usually verbally or in print, but sometimes even physically) as a result of his reportage.

In 2012 a radical website stating it is dedicated to the elimination of the current State of Israel, tried to denigrate Martins’s recent films about Gaza, and a new film also intended to be shown worldwide.

In a telling recorded exchange, the international Correspondent and film-maker confronted a freelance writing from London for an activist website. Martin strongly rebutted any allegation of bias. The attacks by the freelance were launched after Martin had showed the rough-cut of a new film, to be broadcast later in 2012, about a Palestinian dissident in Gaza.

The freelance, who attended a cinema showing, expressed no criticism of the film as such. Instead, he sought to attack a small segment of the past work done by Martin in the region since 2001. The propaganda website acknowledged that the BBC  ‘stands by Paul Martin’.  Martin believes the aim of the propaganda website is to prevent future showings and television exposure of his newest film.

Here is an earlier example, from the exact opposite side:

Early in 2009 hard-line activists claiming to support Israel. A popular blog based in the United States but with worldwide adherents “Little Green Footballs” took issue with filmed reports that Martin’s company, World News & Features, provided to Channel 4 News (UK), CNN and NBC News. It was during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and had followed years of intermittent rocket fire into Israel across the Gaza border.

A dramatic and moving report filmed by a senior Palestinian producer in Gaza, with whom World News & Features had had a long and reliable working relationship, sparked the venomous responses on the ‘Little Green Footballs’ blog. It had claimed that video of a boy killed by an Israeli missile while playing on a rooftop had been faked.

In the typical style of these attacks, bloggers insisted that the scene of doctors trying to revive the 12-year-old child was staged. They also found information that they wrongly interpreted to show that the Palestinian producer (whose brother was the dead boy) had some links with Hamas, the Islamist group leading the conflict against Israel in Gaza. Martin pointed out that the only connection between that producer and Hamas was that the producer’s company had initiated the .ps domain suffix – and any organisation was entitled to purchase a domain with that suffix.

Bloggers went on to accuse Martin himself of being an apologist for Hamas and of lying to allow Hamas propaganda to create hostility to Hamas’ enemy Israel.

The whole issue was settled conclusively when CNN interviewed two top American medical experts. They both showed that the film represented a genuine though failed effort to save the boy’s life.

The latest attack on Martin came from the exact opposite camp – from people and a website pre-programmed to vehemently attack almost all Western reportage of the Palestinian -Israel issue… all accused of bias against the propagandists’ point of view.

Over the last few months, Israel has been threatening to mount a large-scale invasion over parts of the Gaza Strip, in response to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli collective farms and cities.

As the governing authorities in Gaza, Hamas have refused to condemn rocket-firing, arguing they are a legitimate weapon of resistance.

The homemade rockets were first introduced by Hamas in the 2000 Intifada as a form of retaliation against Israel’s incursions.

But today, Israel claims that its continuing blockade of Gaza and its moves to reduce the Gaza Strip’s power supplies is a direct consequence of the rocket attacks.

Hamas have refused to condemn rocket-firing, arguing they are a legitimate weapon of resistance.

The homemade rockets were first introduced by Hamas in the 2000 Intifada as a form of retaliation against Israel’s incursions.

But today, Israel claims that its continuing blockade of Gaza and its moves to reduce the Gaza Strip’s power supplies is a direct consequence of the rocket attacks.

Their actions are widely criticized for being collective punishment of the Palestinian people – but Israelis view the firing of the Qassam rockets to also be collective punishment.

Israel has tried to halt the Qassam threat by raids on metal works in Gaza While the civilian death toll from the rockets is low, the psychological price that Israelis are paying is clearly high.

A recent poll indicates that 64 per cent of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas to broker a ceasefire.

Could there be an end in sight for the war of the rockets?

Paul Martin gains unique access to a Qassam rocket-launching team in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli helicopter-pilots charged with hunting them down.

A peace activist from Gaza who has been denied entry to Britain addressed a London audience on July 8 (2012) – by internet.  The British government had refused him a visa, but the event went ahead at a cinema, and the activist spoke in a pre-recorded Skype conversation from Gaza City.

Former Palestinian militant Mohammed Abu Muailek used to fire rockets at Israel but publicly renounced violence, leading to his arrest and imprisonment by Hamas.

He was slated to speak after the showing of a documentary film called Friends Under Fire, about his change of heart and his subsequent imprisonment.

Abu Muailek was also due to address the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Conflict Issues in June and invitations to attend had been sent to all British Members of Parliament.  But the Home Office’s Border Agency in Amman, Jordan, rejected his application – even though it was fully backed by letters from the All-Party Group.  The group has re-invited Abu Muailek to address them as soon as a visa is granted.

One of the Parliamentary Group’s most senior members, Labour Party MP Andy  Slaughter, attended the cinema showing and told the audience he would do everything in his power to ensure Abu Muailek was admitted into Britain.

“It’s outrageous that a country which is a beacon of freedom of speech has not allowed an advocate of peaceful co-existence to talk to Members of Parliament in our capital city,” said Paul Martin, a London-based journalist who specialises in documentaries on the Middle East and Africa. His film on Abu Muailek’s story, ROCKET MAN UNDER FIRE, ran eight times in 2010, while Abu Muailek was still in jail.

The documentary and the campaign launched on the website www.dissidentunderfire.com ”led to such pressure on Hamas that it seems they decided executing Mohamed was counter-productive,” Martin says.

The Home Office’s rejection letter claimed Abu Muailek might refuse to leave Britain after his visit to Parliament.  ”That is either foolish or some form of paranoia,” said Martin. “He would gain nothing by staying in the UK, especially under the unpleasant conditions of any asylum-seeker. Mohamed has been offered a financially worthwhile fellowship with a prestigious foundation in South Africa – and the British government had been sent a copy of that invitation letter too.”

Abu Muailek was invited to the foundation’s peace fellowship programme by its founder Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the famed anti-apartheid clergyman who won a Nobel Peace Prize.

“It is heart-warming and encouraging that young people – even with firmly entrenched views based on years of indoctrination and propaganda – can convert hatred into friendship,” said Martin. “It points to the need for and the benefit of grassroots dialogue in conflict situations.”

Abu Muailek’s change of heart came about through his work solving computer problems for an international company. One of the company’s fellow-workers happened to be based in Tel Aviv and, as they corresponded, Abu Muailek began to revise his views.

But it was a dangerous move: in April 2009 he was seized by Hamas’s internal security and charged with spying — an offence carrying an automatic death sentence.

When Martin heard of his plight, he decided to go back to Gaza to give evidence in the military court trying the young Palestinian. “I was advised by his family that it could save his life if I showed that Mohamed was simply a dissident who publicly rejected the regime’s use of violence – the antithesis of what a spy would do,” he said.

But when the British film-maker went to the court, he himself was arrested by Hamas and accused of being Abu Muailek’s spymaster.

After 26 days and international pressure, and a visit to Gaza by British MPs, Martin was released. Abu Muailek, who is 27, was not freed until October 2011 after two and a half years in prison.

“Mohammed considers his life may still be at risk in Gaza from people who disagree with the decision to let him out of jail,” Martin said.

Speaking on BBC radio (January 31 2012) he said he was offered a deal to ‘confess’ on television to the media manipulation of the the popular revolt against the regime. His interrogators told him this would help to have him released rather than face a long trial and “probable” execution.

He says he complied and gave an interview from his prison to Press TV, owned by the Iranian government, and two Farsi-language channels. Press TV has had its broadcast licence revoked in the UK, partly due to its misuse by the Iranian regime.

He was detained in Tehran on June 21, 2009 as part of a crackdown after the re-election of President Mahmoud Admadinejad. He was released Oct. 17 that same year.

Newsweek, via Associated Press
Updated Nov. 30, 2009

Maziar Bahari is a prominent journalist and documentarian. He holds both Canadian and Iranian citizenship and has written for Newsweek since 1998. He was detained in Tehran on June 21, 2009 Newsweek said, as part of a crackdown after the re-election of President Mahmoud Admadinejad. He was released Oct. 17. Iran’s state-run news media reported that his family posted bail of about $300,000.

Mr. Bahari was picked up at his mother’s home in Tehran by government security officials who seized videotapes and a laptop computer. He and several dozen other reporters remained jailed in Iran weeks after the post-election protests, according to nonprofit organizations that campaign for the freedom of reporters around the world. The groups say that Iran has imprisoned the most journalists of any nation in the Middle East.

Iran’s state news agencies reported that Mr. Bahari confessed to involvement in promoting what they called a “color revolution.” Mr. Bahari’s family and colleagues have rejected that confession, saying that it must have come under duress.

Mr. Bahari, 41, went to Canada in 1988 to study filmmaking. He has been under contract to Newsweek as its Iran correspondent for the past several years and continues to make documentary films, mostly about subjects in the Middle East.

ARTICLES ABOUT MAZIAR BAHARI

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Britain Revokes License of Iran Network Press TV
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The British media regulator said the network Press TV had failed to address concerns over its editorial independence and had not paid a fine.
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Iran Sentences Newsweek Reporter in Absentia to 13 Years in Prison
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Let My Colleagues Go
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Iranian TV Sees Conspiracy in Neda Video
A new documentary made for Iranian television seeks to prove that the graphic, widely-seen amateur video of a female protester named Neda Agha-Soltan bleeding to death on a Tehran street last June was fake.
January 08, 2010
Iranian TV Sees Conspiracy in Neda Video
A new documentary made for Iranian television seeks to prove that the graphic, widely-seen amateur video of a female protester named Neda Agha-Soltan bleeding to death on a Tehran street last June was fake.
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Ahmadinejad Equates Crackdown in Iran to Policing of G-20 Protests in Pittsburgh and London
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Less than one week after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast an interview with a man who claimed that he had helped to rig Iran’s June presidential election, the channel’s main news anchor, Jon Snow, was suddenly invited to Iran to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
December 24, 2009
Ahmadinejad Equates Crackdown in Iran to Policing of G-20 Protests in Pittsburgh and London
By ROBERT MACKEY
Less than one week after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast an interview with a man who claimed that he had helped to rig Iran’s June presidential election, the channel’s main news anchor, Jon Snow, was suddenly invited to Iran to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
December 23, 2009
Iranian Cleric’s Office Reportedly Attacked
By ROBERT MACKEY
According to an Iranian opposition Web site, members of the Basij militia, which supports Iran’s government, attacked the office of a senior reformist cleric in Iran’s holy city of Qum on Tuesday, one day after a funeral for another dissident cleric there turned into an opposition protest.
December 22, 2009
Jailed Journalist Returns to ‘The Daily Show’
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Maziar Bahari, a journalist who was freed from an Iranian prison in October, appeared on “The Daily Show” Monday night to discuss his 118 days in captivity.
December 01, 2009
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By ROGER COHEN
President Obama has been too weak on human rights abuses in Iran. He needs to express outrage.
November 27, 2009
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Iran Sentences Journalist to Jail Time
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November 24, 2009
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October 24, 2009
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By NAZILA FATHI
Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian Newsweek journalist, had been arrested in postelection unrest and put on trial in August with about 100 other detainees.
October 18, 2009

The Palestinian National Authority

Military Justice

Judgment

In the name of Allah then in the name of the Palestinian people

The Permanent Military Tribunal in Gaza ruled, on the 8th of Thul Qe’da 1432H, the 6th of October 2011, in the case 37/2009 (Courts) and 38/2009 (Prosecution), concerning the accused Mohammed Baraka Abdel Aziz Abu Muailek – civilian – born in 1984 – lives in Tal al-Islam – Mother’s name Tayseera – detained on 21.04.2009 – no previous record, the following:

- Not guilty of the charges in the indictment, which comprised:

1. Conducting espionage with a hostile foreign security apparatus, as indicated by Articles 130, 131 and 132 of the Palestinian Penal Code of 1979.

2.  Accessory to murder, according to Article 378 Paragraph A, in conjunction with Article 89 Paragraph A of the Palestinian Penal Code of 1979,

due to lack of evidence as stipulated by Article 229 Paragraph B of the Code of Revolutionary Jurisdiction of 1979.

He is to be released immediately, unless under arrest pending trial in another case.

This judgment was passed by default and unanimously. It was read publicly and is subject to appeal.

Issued in Gaza City on the 8th of Thul Qe’da 1432H

6th of October 2011

Signed,

Judge Sami al-Ashram, Member

Judge Hussam Shehada, Member

Judge Rami Ashour, Head

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The Hamas intelligence officer pulled out a pair of handcuffs.  “You are not a witness, you are an accused,” he yelled, pointing at me.  “Lock him up.”

I was shoved into a darkened cell – the beginning of twenty six days within a Gaza Gulag.  Held in solitary confinement (except for much-valued trips to the neighbouring cell’s toilet), I woke up one early morning to find that my guards had removed all reading and writing material, and even my toothbrush and comb.

I had come to Gaza in February 2010 intending to give evidence in favour of Mohamed Abu Muailek, a Palestinian accused of collaborating with Israel and now awaiting a likely death sentence. He had rejected his militant group and was talking about why he now felt firing rockets into civilian areas was wrong and counter-productive.  Filming his story, I too became the victim of the security services.

They arrested me at the military courthouse. Trying to extract a confession my interrogators used psychological pressure, and even threatened to kidnap my family or lure them over to Gaza by feigning, or creating, a serious injury or illness for me.

I had previously filmed Mohamed as part of a rocket-firing brigade, using Google Earth to find targets inside Israel. I was convinced that Mohamed was not a spy: which spy would agree to be filmed by a Western film-maker talking about why he now strongly opposed a key plank of the local regime’s platform: firing rockets into Israel?

In early 2009, as we began filming him in his new role as a man of peace, he said he knew and accepted the risks.

One reason Mohamed had changed his mind was an email friendship he established with a fellow-computer-geek, who it emerged lived in Tel Aviv.  We filmed them chatting by internet.

The Hamas authorities had decided this computer friend must be a Mossad spymaster.

He ended up being arrested, disappearing for sixty days, and then being put on trial. His brother, who lives in Germany, says Mohamed was tortured, and, when his sister finally saw him during a prison visit some months later, he was a “broken shell of a man”.

The allegations against me amounted to this: filming Mohamed showed I was his supposed MI6 or Mossad spymaster.

The prison environment was volatile. A prison guard and two prisoners from Al Qaeda at different stages drew their index fingers across their throats threatening to kill me. Inbetween-times, we had some interesting discussions about Islam.

But on Day 23 of my captivity the Hamas authorities sent a top official to see me.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and visiting British MPs, had urged my release.

I was driven out of Gaza three days later with gunmen on either side. Now it remains to be seen whether Mohamed will be convicted, and if so, whether he will face the firing squad.

COPYRIGHT WORLD NEWS & FEATURES 2010.

Palestinian Unity

People & Power looks at the formation of the Palestinian Unity Government earlier this month, against a backdrop of internecine strife.

 Journalist Paul Martin has been piecing together the tortuous and at times seemingly impossible route that brought the new government to fruition. He hears the inside story from key negotiators, including the crucial mediator Mustapha Barghouti, a former unsuccessful candidate for the Palestinian presidency.

In February, as 100 Palestinians, some of them children, lay dead as a result of street fighting and assassinations, the two sides finally reached a deal in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.

 Ghazi Hamad, one of the key Hamas negotiators there, describes a remarkable scene in which erstwhile enemies Mahmoud Abbas, the president, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister and Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas political chief in exile, held hands as they circled the holy Qaba Stone, dressed in white robes.

 When the deal was finally reached, Barghouti was offered the job of information minister. But the clashes, though drastically reduced, have continued to claim occasional victims.

 People & Power has astonishing access into the complexities and limitations of Palestinian power politics.

This episode is scheduled to air at the following times:

Friday 30 March 2007 (21.30 GMT)

Saturday 31 March 2007 (05.30 GMT)

Sunday 01 April 2007 (04.00, 14.30 GMT)

Monday 02 April 2007 (09.00, 20:30 GMT)

Tuesday 03 April 2007 (01.30, 07:30 GMT)

• MIDDLE EAST NEWS
• DECEMBER 2, 2011

Mohamed Abumuailek, a disillusioned Gaza militant, was
jailed by Hamas security forces in April 2009 on spy charges after
going on camera to denounce rocket fire on Israeli cities and talking
about an online friend from Tel Aviv.

After a two-year trial, more than a dozen appearances in a Hamas
military court and an international campaign on his behalf, Mr.
Abumuailek was brought before a judge in early October for a
verdict—and walked free.

Human-rights activists say it was the first case of an accused
collaborator being acquitted since Hamas took control of the coastal
strip in 2007.

A defendant in an unrelated case who faced the judge alongside Mr.
Abumuailek, also on security-related charges, was sentenced to death.

The 26-year-old computer network expert says he now lives in fear
that he could be the target of violence by vigilantes. He shuns
direct contact via telephone or email for fear of being accused of
collaboration, and says he delayed telling the outside world about
his acquittal to avoid attention.

“I’m living some sort of ordinary life with some caution,
trying to convince myself that nothing bad will happen,” Mr.
Abumuailek wrote in an email, in response to questions relayed
through his brother, Yasser. “But there could be people within
Hamas who could commit any crime with no hesitation. One of these
killers may be just a phone call away.”

The dissident said he has been unable to find a job because many
Gazans are afraid to employ someone rumored to be an Israeli spy. His
only income is generated from computer research for a friend
completing a psychology doctorate.

Hamas is holding some 150 Gazans in its jails on charges of
collaborating with Israel. It has executed six in the past two years,
said Bahjat Hilu, a Gaza-based spokesman for the Palestinian
human-rights monitor, the Independent Commission on Human Rights.

“No one has been released so far,” Mr. Hilu said.

Mr. Abumuailek and his brother credit his release with an
international campaign to pressure Hamas from such quarters as Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Amnesty
International, as well as attention from a British Broadcasting Corp.
documentary. The Wall Street Journal also reported on the case.

“They are trying to keep a good image locally and
internationally. Releasing Mohammed is part of this,” said his
brother, Yasser Abumuailek, who resides in Germany.

A spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry said he believed the
decision was made by the court and not the Hamas leadership.

The campaign for Mr. Abumuailek’s release was spearheaded by
Paul Martin, the freelance journalist who documented, in the BBC film
and the WSJ article, Mr. Abumuailek’s transformation – from a
militant who helped rocket squads locate targets in Israel using
Google Earth to a dissident who knowingly put himself in the cross
hairs of Hamas to call into question their targeting of Israeli
civilians.

Mr. Martin was jailed himself for 26 days in Gaza by Hamas after
returning in 2010 to testify on behalf of the young dissident.

“I hope it’s the first sign of appreciation that [Hamas] needs
to align itself with a less-repressive approach to its citizens,”
Mr. Martin said of Mr. Abumuailek’s release. “Gaza also needs to
catch up to the Arab Spring, which so far seems to largely have
passed it by.”

Mr. Abumuailek said he hopes in the future to travel abroad to
seek medical treatment and to thank his supporters in person. And
despite the danger, he said he remains resolved to voice dissent and
promote the cause of other dissidents as well. “My activism won’t
stop,” he wrote. “My plans now are dedicated only to being a
patriotic dissident, who wants a better life for his people and for
people all around the globe.”

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

[NOTE: Grammatical errors corrected.]

• the way Mohamed Abu Muailek became a rocket-firer,
• why he changed his mind,
• his outspoken criticism of the Hamas armed wing’s provocative military tactics,
• Mohamed’s surprising friendship by Internet with an Israeli,
• Mohamed’s efforts to flee Gaza,
• Mohamed’s dramatic message before his arrest,
• Martin’s own arrest after an effort to give evidence about Mohamed’s openness in a Hamas-controlled ‘military court’,
• Martin’s near-death experiences in a Hamas secret prison,
• Martin’s statement to media as he gets out of Gaza,
• Hamas’s verbal onslaught against Martin even as they are releasing him,
• Martin’s welcome by Archbishop Tutu who helped to ‘spring’ him,
• Mohamed’s Israeli friend is found and speaks out about the limits of their friendship, and
• Mohamed’s elder brother campaigns for Mohamed’s release. and explains why Mohamed is a Prisoner of Conscience.

“We hope this will give a flavour of what rich material is available for any documentary or film,” said Martin. “From these clips we get just a hint of the astonishing story that is still unfolding.  It is now more relevant than ever, not only in its human dimensions, but also to get a unique insight into the context of  and the future outcomes of the Arab Upheavals.”

Rocketman presentation
00 – BBC World News trails ‘Rocket Man Under Fire’ Film

Rocketman presentation
01 – Mohamed on rocket-firing mission, 2007

Rocketman presentation
02 – Mohamed talks online to an Israeli friend

Rocketman presentation
03 – Mohamed condemns Hamas for exposing civilians to danger

Rocketman presentation
04 – Mohamed tries to escape to Egypt

Rocketman presentation
05 – Mohamed tries again to flee from Gaza

Rocketman presentation
06 – Hamas arrests Mohamed

Rocketman presentation
07 – Paul Martin’s arrest reported worldwide

Rocketman presentation
08 – Paul Martin recounts death threats on first day in prison

Rocketman presentation
09 – Hamas foreign minister releases but attacks Paul Martin

Rocketman presentation

10 – Paul Martin statement to media near Gaza border

Rocketman presentation
11 – Mohamed’s Israeli friend agrees to talk on camera

Rocketman presentation

12 – Archbishop Tutu greets Paul Martin after his release

Rocketman presentation

13 – Mohamed’s Israeli friend Dan discusses their internet relationship

Rocketman presentation

14 -”Mohamed is prisoner of conscience,” says his brother

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The film has been shown eight times on BBC WORLD NEWS.

During the programme CNN’s Middle East Correspondent Ben Wedeman said any journalist working in a volatile area like Gaza was subject to serious risks.  At a time when the Strip was under Fatah control, Wedeman said he had himself been involved in a kidnapping that he thinks was orchestrated by senior Fatah leaders.

BBC NEWSNIGHT introduces a  special report from Paul Martin, who, it says, gained “extraordinary access” to Hamas and Fatah fighters in Gaza.

OTHER CLIPS:

Gaza report 2 – Newsnight, Israeli soldiers practise near frontline

Gaza report 3 – Newsnight, rockets being prepared

Gaza report 4 – Newsnight, battle in Bet Lehiya

Gaza report 5 – Newsnight, children as weapons of war

Gaza report 6 – Newsnight, Boy plays in dead rocket man’s car

Gaza report 7 – Newsnight, Boy’s therapy

MOHAMED ABU MUAILEK ON SKYPE LINK FROM GAZA AFTER 2011 RELEASE

HAMAS ADMITS: GAZA DISSIDENT ‘NOT GUILTY’.

ABU MUAILEK SET FREE, BUT SAFETY CONCERNS REMAIN.

GAZA CITY — A dissident former Gaza militant Mohamed Abu Muailek, 26, has been freed by Hamas after being declared innocent of all charges against him. He says he feels stronger and more determined than ever before.

Charges alleged against Abu Muailek had included espionage on behalf of the “enemy”, for which there is a mandatory death penalty. He had been held in a prison cell for two and a half years.

Abu Muailek is now recovering from his ordeal at an undisclosed location inside the Gaza Strip.  In a statement emailed to those who campaigned for him, Abu Muailek said: “I’m out stronger in belief and better in mind. And the hit that doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

He had been a member of a militant armed group that fired rockets into Israel, but later rejected its violent approach and sought to publicise his changed views.

The news of his release was first revealed on the website dissidentunderfire.com, which has campaigned for Abu Muailek’s freedom and declared him a ‘Dissident of Conscience’.  Campaigners for his freedom said the release of Abu Muailek was the result of extensive international pressure from major world icons including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

His brother Yasser Abu Muailek, who lives in Germany, said the family in Gaza is worried that this verdict will “definitely not sit well” with some  militants.

“I believe Mohammed’s safety and well-being cannot be guaranteed as long as he’s inside the Gaza Strip,” said Yasser Abu Muailek. “We need to ensure he gets safe passage out of Gaza.”

In filmed comments last year on a BBC television programme, Yasser Abu Muailek revealed that death threats against his brother were made during an interrogation.  He said his brother had been warned that, even if he were ever set free, he would still be killed once he was outside prison.

Mohamed Abu Muailek was released three days after a military court found him not guilty of any crime.

Abu Muailek was detained in April 2009, and for the next two months was held incommunicado in a secret detention centre run by Hamas Internal Security, where he was allegedly tortured.  He then spent more than two years in a national prison, making periodic visits to a military tribunal.

The military judges and the military prosecution are employed by Hamas.

The security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were forcibly overthrown by Hamas gunmen in four days of fighting in June 2007.  The Palestinian Authority, run by PA president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, has declared the security takeover illegal but is unable to exert any control inside the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Professor John Dugard, British Member of Parliament Lord David Steel and others made appeals to Hamas for Abu Muailek’s release or expressed deep concern at his treatment.

In urging his release, Archbishop Tutu and Professor Dugard argued that Abu Muailek was a dissident whose change of heart from rocket-firing militant to peace advocate led to his arrest.

Prior to Abu Muailek’s detention in April 2009, international film-maker Paul Martin had been making a documentary about him. In February 2010 Martin volunteered to give evidence at Abu Muailek’s military trial — but when he reached the military tribunal was himself seized and held captive.  Martin was held in isolation and threatened with death before eventually being freed after 26 days.

“I am thrilled and delighted that through relentless pressure on Hamas from world icons like Archbishop Tutu, and due to the media and human rights interest in the case, a remarkable and unique result has been achieved,” Martin said.

“According to a Human Rights Watch report in 2009, at least 32 alleged spies or agents were killed long before they could even get to a tribunal. I also want to pay tribute to BBC WORLD NEWS for its decision to air the film “Rocket Man Under Fire” four times, and to repeat it four more times over the Christmas period last year.

“That film’s revelations, and coverage on BBC’s ‘HardTalk’ and on CNN’s ‘International Correspondent’ programmes, as well as major pieces published in the Guardian and most recently in the Wall Street Journal, all must have helped save Mohamed from execution and must have helped lead to this sensational result.”

Martin added: “We must not forget that for well over two years a young man’s liberty has been removed, his life has been in serious jeopardy, and he has faced enormous pressures and torture – a high price to pay for taking a peaceful path that the rulers of his territory spurn.  He is a true dissident, and a true prisoner of conscience. This is a triumph for the right of a citizen to speak out against violence if he so chooses.”

He continued: “Freeing Mohamed was the primary issue here.  But I also feel it proves that journalists have a vital role in exposing repression of dissidents who have been willing to talk to the media.

“I also repeat what I said to fellow-journalists inside the Gaza Strip as I was being released from 26 days of illegal captivity: ‘This is a great victory for the right of journalists to report from difficult areas and on difficult topics without the threat of detention, arrest, or intimidation.’

“What continues to worry me, though, is the number of journalists worldwide who have been detained, locked up, made to disappear, or tortured for their courageous reporting.  It is even worse for so many ordinary dissidents who were not lucky enough to have their cases followed, known about or reported internationally,” Martin said.

“We are now determined to follow this success by building new strong campaigns for other Dissidents of Conscience – people worldwide who, while non-violently resisting oppression, have been victimised by a regime or armed group for speaking out to the media.”

Lord David Steel, the former Liberal democrat leader who had led a British parliamentary delegation to Gaza during the period of Martin’s arrest, also expressed pleasure.

“I am happy to learn of his release having raised the case with Hamas in Gaza two years ago,” he commented during a House of Lords parliamentary session in London.

La guerre des roquettes à Gaza

Transcription

>> Vidéo (22’)

Le verger d’une ancienne colonie israélienne de Gaza, abandonné depuis l’année dernière… Aujourd’hui, il offre une couverture parfaite aux brigades des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa, fondées par Yasser Arafat.
Voici la cellule Abu Rish, dont les roquettes artisanales sont à même de semer la terreur dans les villes israéliennes voisines.
Ces hommes sont en train de lancer une nouvelle opération. Mais Israël va sans doute riposter durement. Et en quelques secondes à peine, avant même que les roquettes n’aient fini de traverser le ciel.
Les combattants palestiniens ont intérêt à se mettre vite à l’abri.
Paul Martin : Quelle est la portée de ces roquettes ?
- 14 kilomètres. Elles peuvent aller jusqu’au port israélien d’Ashkelon.
- Est-ce que vos roquettes se perfectionnent, gagnent en puissance et en portée pour frapper plus de gens ?
- Oh ça oui ! Elles vont de plus en plus loin et frappent de plus en plus de gens. Je suis très content.

Effectivement, les roquettes artisanales se perfectionnent. Dans un atelier de fabrication implanté dans le camp de réfugiés de Jabaliyah, d’autres membres des brigades des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa préparent un cocktail mortel. Les ingrédients ? Des produits chimiques artisanaux, mais aussi – comme ils nous le montrent – du TNT, un puissant explosif.
- Cette roquette a une longue portée, environ la distance d’ici à Ashkelon. On est très satisfaits. La charge se compose de gravats et de TNT.

La guerre des roquettes n’est pas nouvelle. Mais aujourd’hui, elle s’est beaucoup développée. C’est le Hamas qui a mis au point la roquette Qassam à partir d’une technologie fournie par le Hezbollah, le parti islamiste libanais soutenu par l’Iran. D’autres milices lui ont ensuite emboîté le pas. Avant le retrait israélien de la bande de Gaza en septembre 2005, les roquettes servaient parfois contre les colonies juives ou les positions israéliennes. Mais les engins tirés depuis l’intérieur de la bande de Gaza avaient rarement une portée ou une précision suffisantes pour frapper les villes de l’État hébreu.

Aujourd’hui, il n’y a plus d’Israéliens à Gaza même. Mais les groupes armés palestiniens sont venus s’installer sur les anciennes positions juives, comme ici, et c’est désormais depuis ces collines qu’ils lancent leurs roquettes. Ils se sont ainsi nettement rapprochés des populations israéliennes qui vivent juste derrière les barbelés qui marquent la frontière.
Le kibboutz de Karmiyya. Depuis peu, une aile abrite des familles juives évacuées des colonies de l’extrême nord de la bande de Gaza l’année dernière. Contre leur gré, ces familles se sont installées quelques kilomètres plus au nord, sur le territoire israélien. Aujourd’hui, elles sont la cible des roquettes palestiniennes.
Voici ce qui reste du nouveau foyer d’Osher Amar, âgé de huit mois, et de ses parents, Batel et Yuval. Osher était dans son landau, juste devant la maison, lorsqu’une roquette Qassam a explosé contrer le mur en début d’année. Des éclats lui ont fracturé le crâne. Il a survécu, mais de justesse.

Dana Shitrit, habitante de Karmiyya: – Il a été touché à l’œil. Il lui sortait de la tête. Un tout petit bébé de huit mois… Il avait le crâne en sang.
Paul Martin : Que pensez-vous des gens qui lancent les roquettes ?
- J’ai pitié d’eux. Et encore plus de nous.
- Pourquoi avez-vous pitié d’eux ?
- Parce que ce n’est pas par la terreur qu’on peut obtenir la paix. Ni quoi ce soit d’autre, d’ailleurs.

Le petit Osher va nettement mieux. D’après les médecins, c’est un miracle qu’il ne soit pas définitivement handicapé. Un miracle, surtout, qu’il soit encore en vie. Osher et ses parents ont quitté Karmiyya. Mais sa mère n’ose plus y retourner, même pour voir ses amis. Elle a trop peur. Les parents d’Osher sont aux petits soins pour leur fils. Ils savent qu’il est encore loin d’être guéri.
Batel Amar, mère d’Osher: – J’ai demandé à mon mari où il était, mais il n’a pas pu répondre. Il avait le nez et les oreilles en sang. Sa chemise était toute rouge. J’ai cru qu’ils allaient y rester tous les deux. J’ai eu très peur. Puis mon père est arrivé avec une ambulance.

Les hélicoptères sont le principal moyen de riposte utilisé par Israël. L’unité d’élite Cobra, sur une base aérienne des environs de Tel Aviv. Cet engin est équipé d’un armement lourd : un gros canon et des missiles.
Un pilote d’hélicoptère Cobra: – Voici la partie optique de guidage assisté des missiles et du canon. On reçoit l’image de la caméra dans le cockpit, et c’est à partir de cette image qu’on guide les armes.

Le pilote, qui gardera l’anonymat, fait partie de l’armée de réserve. Au civil, il dirige une société d’édition de logiciels. Sa mission est claire : tuer les lanceurs de roquettes de Gaza. Il est convaincu qu’elle permet de sauver des vies:
- Pour moi, il s’agit d’une mission de sauvetage. Il y a environ un an, une Qassam a frappé cet enfant de quatre ans et son grand-père à l’entrée de la maternelle. Quand je pars en mission, j’ai l’impression d’essayer de sauver cet enfant. Et ses amis, qui vivent tous les jours dans la peur des nombreuses roquettes tirées par les terroristes palestiniens.
PM : Quand vous rentrez chez vous, après une mission, vous arrivez à dormir ?
- Parfois, je continue de penser aux cas de conscience que ma mission m’a posés. Mais la plupart du temps, la question qui me taraude, c’est : pourquoi est-ce que je n’ai pas tiré ? J’aurais dû. J’aurais peut-être empêché un terroriste de poursuivre ses activités.

Un hélicoptère de combat en mission. Les pilotes insistent sur le fait qu’ils ne visent que les transports d’activistes qui viennent de lancer une attaque ou sont sur le point de le faire. Eux-mêmes tirent leurs missiles avec une précision mortelle. Les raids aériens tuent essentiellement des activistes palestiniens. Mais pas toujours.

La morgue de l’hôpital de Shifa, à Gaza. La foule est en colère. Mohammed Al-Dahdouh, 28 ans, conduisait une unité de lanceurs de roquettes du Djihad islamique lorsqu’un hélicoptère a tiré sur sa voiture. Il a alors percuté un autre véhicule, rempli de civils. Le corps de Mohannad Amn, 5 ans, mort tout comme Naïma, sa mère, et Hanane, sa grand-mère.
Le jour même, des hommes en armes portent Mohammed à sa dernière demeure, et le Djihad fait une déclaration publique : ses nouvelles roquettes seraient tellement puissantes que « l’ennemi sioniste devrait se dépêcher d’évacuer les colonies d’Ashkelon parce que nos roquettes… le poursuivront jour et nuit. »

La semaine dernière, trois roquettes Qassam tirées par le Djihad islamique ont explosé tout près de la maison d’Amir Peretz, le ministre israélien de la Défense. Ce dernier a mis en garde les Palestiniens : « Les lanceurs de roquettes mènent Gaza à la catastrophe ».
La guerre des roquettes se joue aussi sur l’eau. Un navire de combat israélien piste les trafiquants d’armes au large de la bande de Gaza. Le meilleur moyen d’introduire du matériel militaire à Gaza est de l’acheminer par voie maritime, depuis l’Égypte.Le lendemain matin, les Israéliens repèrent un hors-bord suspect qui fait route vers le nord.
Le combat est inégal…
La marine israélienne affirme avoir vu l’équipage jeter par-dessus bord du matériel de guerre, récupéré plus tard par des plongeurs. Une demi-tonne de TNT aurait été ainsi repêchée. C’est la deuxième prise de ce genre en une semaine.

C’est une immense partie de cacha-cache qui se joue ici. L’issue est mortelle. L’objectif des Israéliens est de priver les brigades des explosifs dont elles ont besoin pour fabriquer les roquettes.
Yoram Lax, marine israélienne: – En fin de compte, nos forces sont parvenues à empêcher un autre trafic d’armes. Il portait sur de grandes quantités de matériel de guerre qui, un jour ou l’autre, aurait frappé des citoyens et des villes israéliennes.

Un club de sport dans les beaux quartiers de la ville de Gaza. Il servait de couverture à des activités secrètes… jusqu’à ce que tout saute. Un hélicoptère israélien a bombardé le toit, tuant trois activistes du Fatah, membres des Brigades des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa. Ils s’entraînaient et fabriquaient leurs roquettes ici.
Enroulés dans un drapeau du Fatah, les corps des trois activistes sont enterrés quelques heures après leur mort, au son de la musique martiale des Brigades des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa, qui résonne dans les rues de la ville. Ce jour-là, une solidarité inattendue s’exprime. Dans le cortège, des hommes brandissent le drapeau vert du Hamas. Ismaël Haniyeh, leader du mouvement et Premier ministre de l’Autorité palestinienne, a fait le déplacement. Son parti n’est pas impliqué dans les attaques à la roquette. Mais sa présence est perçue ici comme un soutien tacite. Au cimetière, les combattants d’Al-Aqsa exhibent fièrement le sang de leurs camarades, dans des cercueils vides. Les corps des « martyrs » gisent maintenant sous la terre brune de leur pays.
Ismaël Haniyeh, leader du Hamas: – Ces assassinats vont consolider l’unité nationale du peuple palestinien. Ils vont lui redonner courage et renforcer sa détermination à résister aux agressions de l’occupant israélien.
Ce soir-là, une veillée funèbre est organisée pour Yassin Barghout, 23 ans, chef d’une unité de combattants masqués d’Al-Aqsa. Le commandant local, Abu Yusif, combattant des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa, fait comprendre que les brigades n’ont pas l’intention de désamorcer le conflit qui les oppose à Israël: – Nous riposterons par le même type d’attaque. Nous rendrons chaque coup. S’ils nous bombardent, nous les bombarderons aussi. C’est comme ça qu’on fait, chez Al-Aqsa.
Mais la guerre peut aussi se faire par d’autres moyens : en l’occurrence, par Internet. Hassan Bakr gagne sa vie en faisant du conseil financier et en spéculant sur les bourses de New York et Hong Kong. Aujourd’hui, le cours de l’or a passé la barre des 700 dollars. Mais sa vraie passion, la voici : promouvoir la « cause » des moudjahidin et ses « héros ». Certaines de ces images sont consultables sur le site qu’il a conçu. Les visages qui défilent sont ceux de quelques-uns des quinze lanceurs de roquettes tués depuis la fin de l’année dernière.
Hassan Bakr: – J’ai un petit film tourné avec un téléphone portable. On les voit avant leur mort.
Hassan produit également des CD-ROM et des cassettes vidéos sur les exploits des « lanceurs de roquettes ». On les trouve dans toutes les vidéothèques de Gaza. Naturellement, seuls les visages des combattants morts sont montrés.

Comme celui de son frère Suhail, par exemple. Les leaders des moudjahidin tombés au combat sont tous traités en héros. Leur visage est affiché à tous les coins de rue, sur des immeubles, des lampadaires. Tout cela participe d’un culte des morts très élaboré.

Mme Bakr, épouse d’un médecin, ne regrette pas la mort de son fils: – Tout le monde meurt un jour. Mon fils est mort en combattant pour sa patrie. C’est un honneur. Tous les jours, des gens meurent dans la rue. Des gens qui ne font rien de mal. Mais ça n’empêche pas les Israéliens de les tuer.
Hassan Bakr: – Le martyr obtient le rachat de soixante-dix membres de sa famille, et il a une place élevée au paradis.

Encore un enterrement. Le corps de Suhail est emporté vers le cimetière, toujours selon le même rituel : salves de tirs, slogans scandés aux hauts parleurs et musique martiale composée spécialement pour l’occasion. Et bien sûr les manifestations de colère de la famille Bakr et de ses proches. L’épave de la belle voiture de Suhail est garée devant la maison familliale des Bakr. Les enfants jouent sur les sièges où le héros et ses camarades sont morts. Mais pourquoi ce monument macabre ?
Hassan Bakr: – C’est une manière de dire au monde : « Nous sommes toujours là, et nous continuons de nous battre pour notre liberté. »
Adel Barghout, 19 ans, frère de Yassin Barghout, combattant des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa, mort :- Il est nécessaire et même vital de combattre notre ennemi et de libérer la terre palestinienne. Nous allons poursuivre la guerre sainte. Nous ne cesserons jamais de lutter pour nos droits.
PM: – Vous haïssez les juifs ?
Adel Barghout: – Si Dieu le veut, je souhaite qu’ils meurent tous et aillent en enfer. Tout notre peuple sera soulagé ce jour-là.
PM: – Mais vous parlez de millions de personnes !
Adel Barghout: – Pas de problème. Qu’Allah leur envoie tous la mort !

Nous rencontrons le chef d’une unité de combattants quelques heures avant qu’il ne lance une nouvelle attaque à la roquette.Ami Abu Sharia, « Abu Moudjahid », chef d’une unité de combattants des martyrs d’Al-Aqsa: – La résistance contre l’occupation israélienne ne cesse de grandir. Un jour ou l’autre, nos frères du Hamas nous rejoindrons.

PM: – Êtes-vous déçu par l’attitude du Hamas, qui n’a pas pris part aux actions militaires depuis plusieurs semaines, voire plusieurs mois ?
Ami Abu Sharia: – Bien entendu, nos frères des brigades Al-Qassam du Hamas nous manquent sur le champ de bataille. Ils ont combattu à nos côtés depuis le tout premier tir de la seconde Intifada.

Abu Moudjahid est mort le 8 avril 2006

Ismaël Haniyeh, le Premier ministre palestinien issu des rangs du Hamas, ne souhaite pas empêcher les tirs de roquettes contre Israël. Il s’adresse ici aux familles des hommes détenus en Israël ou de ceux qu’on appelle les « martyrs », morts au combat contre l’État hébreu. Non seulement il refuse de condamner l’attentat-suicide commis par le Djihad islamique à Tel Aviv, en avril dernier, qui a tué 11 civils, mais il promet même une aide spéciale aux familles des combattants. L’Autorité palestinienne est pourtant au bord de la banqueroute.

Ismaël Haniyeh, Premier ministre de l’Autorité palestinienne: – Nous ne nous laisserons pas décourager, ni détruire. Nous ne capitulerons pas. Nous n’abandonnerons jamais.

Si Ismaël Haniyeh déclare aux familles des détenus et des martyrs : « Nous continuerons à résister », il ne dit pas comment, ni avec quels moyens. « Avec les roquettes et les bombes ! », répond la foule.
La mère d’un détenu : – Il faut qu’ils lancent plus de roquettes. Pour libérer nos prisonniers, je suis prête à me faire exploser.
La femme d’un « martyr »: – Regardez les hélicoptères israéliens ! Ils nous tuent, nous et nos enfants, jour et nuit. Mon mari et un de mes fils ont été tués. Mes deux autres fils ont été blessés, et ma maison détruite.

Tard dans la nuit, une voiture conduit un responsable de la branche armée du Hamas, à une rare interview. Dans son programme électoral, le Hamas se vantait de ses attaques à la roquette et autres faits d’armes contre Israël. Mais depuis un an et demi, les brigades Al-Qassam ne font plus parler d’elles. Pourquoi ?
D’après Abu Obayda, des brigades Al-Qassam, branche armée du Hamas, le mouvement attend tout simplement son heure: – La stratégie de résistance demeure. Mais on ne peut pas continuer à se battre indéfiniment. Donc la résistance va prendre de nouvelles formes en traversant différentes phases.
PM: – Vous voulez dire que vous envisagez un cessez-le-feu ?
Abu Obayda – Je ne peux pas donner de détails sur la direction que va prendre la résistance par rapport à la forme qu’elle a eu pendant la seconde Intifada. Elle évoluera en fonction des nécessités sur le terrain.
PM: – Est-ce que les attentats-suicide demeurent une arme essentielle que vous allez continuer d’utiliser ?
Abu Obayda: – C’est une de nos tactiques, et nous y recourrons à chaque fois que ce sera nécessaire.

Et sur ces mots, il disparaît dans la nuit.

Au cours des derniers mois, les Israéliens ont tiré des milliers de salves d’artillerie sur la bande de Gaza. Officiellement, ils ne ciblent que les zones frontalières, inhabitées depuis le départ des colons et des soldats israéliens l’année dernière. Aujourd’hui, ces zones sont des aires idéales pour le lancement des roquettes Qassam. Officiellement encore, les Israéliens ne pilonnent que les zones où ils soupçonnent des déplacements de troupes.

Nous avons été autorisés à filmer un bombardement. Mais pas à faire d’interviews.
Voici le résultat. Nous sommes dans une zone rurale du nord de la bande de Gaza, tout près d’Israël. Les paysans ne comprennent absolument pas le sens de ce bombardement. À moins que les Israéliens ne veuillent endommager leurs récoltes…
Le sifflement des obus est assourdissant.

Un fermier: – On ne les entend que quand ils sont déjà au-dessus de nos têtes. Ça fait « nnnnnnnnn ». Ils dégagent de la fumée, puis touchent le sol et explosent dans un fracas ahurissant.

Pour beaucoup d’habitants de Beit Lehia, les Israéliens ne cherchent pas tant à dissuader les activistes qu’à intimider la population et à détruire l’économie de la région. En avril, à deux reprises au moins, les obus israéliens ont dévié et frappé des civils.
Un obus a défoncé le toit de la ferme de cette famille. Hadil, huit ans, est morte. Son père en veut aux deux camps: – Les Palestiniens ne devraient pas lancer de roquettes depuis des zones habitées. S’ils veulent vraiment en lancer, qu’ils aillent faire ça loin des habitations !
Quant aux Israéliens, ils pilonnent nos champs jour et nuit. Pourtant, depuis quatre jours, aucune roquette n’a été tirée d’ici. Mais les Israéliens continuent quand même.
Mechi Fendel, femme du rabbin de Sdérot: – La première Qassam est tombée juste là, où habite le maire de la ville. Là où on voit des lumières. La ville de Sdérot est très étendue. C’est une cible facile.

Hier, une roquette Qassam s’est abattue sur une école de la ville de Sdérot, dont la population est majoritairement pauvre. À ce moment-là, les toilettes étaient vides, et la salle de classe aussi. Pour Amit, directeur du collège de garçons de Netiv, Sdérot, c’est un miracle que les enfants n’aient pas été présents à ce moment-là: – Grâce à Dieu, nous avons été sauvés par un miracle. La Qassam est rentrée par là dans les toilettes. La pièce a été complètement détruite. Nous remercions Dieu de nous avoir épargné.
PM: – Il y a des victimes des deux côtés…
Amit: – Comment pouvez-vous comparer ? C’est impossible. Nous, on ne tue pas des enfants ou des personnes âgées. En tout cas, on ne les vise pas. On vise les terroristes.

Ella Abukassis, 17 ans, a été tuée l’année dernière par une roquette, à quelques mètres de chez elle. Aujourd’hui, un banc commémoratif a été érigé sur le lieu exact de sa mort. Ella est enterrée ici. La musique, dont elle jouait avec talent, l’a accompagnée dans sa tombe.
Mechi Fendel: – Le pays souffre. Nous n’avons pas d’enfants à sacrifier ! Parce que ce sont nos enfants, notre avenir qu’on tue !
Voilà ce qu’on endure : sur les cinq personnes tuées ici par une Qassam, quatre étaient des enfants ou des adolescents. Ella avait 17 ans. Il y avait aussi deux petits, d’un et quatre ans. On ne peut pas vivre comme ça. Les gens ont peur de sortir de chez eux.

Lors d’une cérémonie secrète, les combattants d’Al-Aqsa jurent de poursuivre la guerre des roquettes. Mais en perdant neuf camarades au cours des derniers mois, ces moudjahidin ont aussi perdu quasiment tous leurs leaders. Ils traversent une crise profonde et n’ont pas tiré de roquettes depuis plusieurs semaines.

Au cimetière juif de Sdérot, la femme du rabbin dit la prière des morts pour la jeune Ella.
Au même moment, dans un cimetière de Gaza, Hassan Bakr contemple la tombe de son frère en silence.

Derrière lui, le soleil se couche sur la Méditerranée. Tout a l’air paisible.
Mais c’est souvent après le coucher du soleil que démarre la guerre des roquettes. Et la paix n’est pas en vue.

————————————————
Paul Martin
London-based Paul Martin, the executive producer, has covered the Middle East since he spent four years in Cairo from 1978 to 1983 for the BBC. He now is a specialist in the Arab world, writing frontline reports for major newspapers and making television reportage. This year his TV reports have been broadcast on Channel 4 and More 4 in England, and on ITV, as well as on other European channels.
Among his scoops: this week, a report on arms smuggling in tunnels under the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

LINKS
www.worldnf.tv
www.worldnf.com

MEDIA
Hearts
Israel Insider (Israel)
Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Mari (Israel)
Arabic Media Internet Network (Palestinian)
Palestine Chronicle (Palestinian)

Edité le : 08-06-06
Dernière mise à jour le : 08-06-06

HAMAS ADMITS: GAZA DISSIDENT ‘NOT GUILTY’.

GAZA CITY October 9 2011 — A dissident former Gaza militant Mohamed Abu Muailek, 26, has been freed by Hamas after being declared innocent of all charges against him.

But in a  video conversation conducted through Skype from Gaza, Abu Muailek indicated his life remains in danger.  He said prisoners held alongside him had given details of others accused of collaboration who had been released only to be “executed” later by militants.

Charges alleged against Abu Muailek had included espionage on behalf of the “enemy”, for which there is a mandatory death penalty. He had been held in a prison cell for two and a half years.

Abu Muailek is now recovering from his ordeal at an undisclosed location inside the Gaza Strip. He had been a member of a militant armed group that fired rockets into Israel, but later rejected its violent approach and sought to publicise his changed views.

The news of his release was first revealed on the website dissidentunderfire.com, which has campaigned for Abu Muailek’s freedom and declared him a ‘Dissident of Conscience’.  Campaigners for his freedom said the release of Abu Muailek was the result of extensive international pressure from major world icons including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

His brother Yasser Abu Muailek, who lives in Germany, said the family in Gaza is worried that this verdict will “definitely not sit well” with some members of Al Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, or with its Internal Security unit.

“I believe Mohammed’s safety and well-being cannot be guaranteed as long as he’s inside the Gaza Strip,” said Yasser Abu Muailek. “We need to ensure he gets safe passage out of Gaza.”

In filmed comments last year on a BBC television programme, Yasser Abu Muailek revealed that death threats against his brother were made during an interrogation.  He said his brother had been warned that, even if he were ever set free, he would still be killed once he was outside prison.

Mohamed Abu Muailek was released three days after a military court found him not guilty of any crime. The military prosecutor has told Abu Muailek’s lawyers that he will not appeal the verdict.  So far Abu Muailek is barred from leaving the Gaza Strip.

Abu Muailek was detained in April 2009, and for the next two months was held incommunicado in a secret detention centre run by Hamas Internal Security, where he was allegedly tortured.  He then spent more than two years in a national prison, making periodic visits to a military tribunal.

The military judges and the military prosecution are employed by the same grouping in the Gaza Strip – Hamas’s Internal Security, a division of the Hamas Ministry of Interior and Security.

The security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were forcibly overthrown by Hamas gunmen in four days of fighting in June 2007.  The Palestinian Authority, run by PA president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, has declared the security takeover illegal but is unable to exert any control inside the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Professor John Dugard, British Member of Parliament Lord David Steel and others had made appeals to Hamas for Abu Muailek’s release or had expressed deep concern at his treatment.

In urging his release, Archbishop Tutu and Professor Dugard had argued that he was not a spy, just a dissident whose change of heart from rocket-firing militant to peace advocate led to his arrest.

Prior to Abu Muailek’s detention in April 2009, international film-maker Paul Martin was making a documentary about him. In February 2010 Martin volunteered to give evidence at Abu Muailek’s military trial — but when he reached the military tribunal was himself seized and held captive.  Martin was held in isolation and threatened with death before eventually being freed after 26 days.

“I am thrilled and delighted that through relentless pressure on Hamas from world icons like Archbishop Tutu, and due to the media and human rights interest in the case, a remarkable and unique result has been achieved,” Martin said today.

“According to a Human Rights Watch report, most alleged spies or agents are dispensed with long before they can even get to a tribunal. I also want to pay tribute to BBC WORLD NEWS for its decision to air the film “Rocket Man Under Fire” four times, and to repeat it four more times over the Christmas period in 2010.

“That film’s revelations, and coverage on BBC’s ‘HardTalk’ and on CNN’s ‘International Correspondent’ programmes, as well as major pieces published in the Guardian and most recently in the Wall Street Journal, all must have helped save Mohamed from execution and must have helped lead to this sensational result.”

Martin added: “We must not forget that for well over two years a young man’s liberty has been removed, his life has been in serious jeopardy, and he has faced enormous pressures and torture – a high price to pay for taking a peaceful path that the rulers of his territory spurn.  He is a true dissident, and a true prisoner of conscience. This is a triumph for the right of a citizen to speak out against violence if he so chooses.”

He continued: “Freeing Mohamed was the primary issue here.  But I also feel it proves that journalists have a vital role in exposing repression of dissidents who have been willing to talk to the media.

“I also repeat what I said to fellow-journalists inside the Gaza Strip as I was being released from 26 days of illegal captivity: ‘This is a great victory for the right of journalists to report from difficult areas and on difficult topics without the threat of detention, arrest, or intimidation.’

“What continues to worry me, though, is the number of journalists detained, locked up, made to disappear, or tortured for their courageous reporting worldwide.  It is even worse for so many ordinary dissidents who were not lucky enough to have their cases followed, known about or reported internationally,” Martin said.

“We are now determined to follow this success by building new strong campaigns for other Dissidents of Conscience – people worldwide who, while non-violently resisting oppression, have been victimised by a regime or armed group for speaking out to the media.”

Part 2 of a broadcast of 23 minutes, shown on  AL JAZEERA INTERNATIONAL.  It was posted on Youtube by an unknown subscriber.

Parts 1 and 2 of a broadcast of 23 minutes, shown on  AL JAZEERA INTERNATIONAL.  It was posted on Youtube by an unknown subscriber.

THIS IS THE AL JAZEERA WEBSITE DESCRIPTION:

People & Power

Rocket men

People & Power takes a look at a Qassam rocket launching team from the Gaza Strip.

Many Qassam rocket fighters have lost family members to Israeli military attacks Over the last few months, Israel has been threatening to mount a large-scale invasion over parts of the Gaza Strip, in response to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli collective farms and cities. As the governing authorities in Gaza, Hamas have refused to condemn rocket-firing, arguing they are a legitimate weapon of resistance. The homemade rockets were first introduced by Hamas in the 2000 Intifada as a form of retaliation against Israel’s incursions. But today, Israel claims that its continuing blockade of Gaza and its moves to reduce the Gaza Strip’s power supplies is a direct consequence of the rocket attacks. Their actions are widely criticised for being collective punishment of the Palestinian people – but Israelis view the firing of the Qassam rockets to also be collective punishment. Israel has tried to halt the Qassam threat by raids on metal works in Gaz While the civilian death toll from the rockets is low, the psychological price that Israelis are paying is clearly high. A recent poll indicates that 64 per cent of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas to broker a ceasefire. Could there be an end in sight for the war of the rockets? Paul Martin gains unique access to a Qassam rocket launching team in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli helicopter pilots charged with hunting them down. Watch part one of this episode of People & Power Watch part two of this episode of People & Power This episode of People & Power aired from Sunday March 2, 2008

ABU MUAILEK ON WALL STREET JOURNAL FRONT PAGE. TO READ THE ACTUAL ARTICLE GO TO THE "NEWS" TAB, ABOVE.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the world’s most respected moral icons, has made a dramatic offer to go personally to Gaza in order to secure the release of the long-detained Mohamed Abu Muailek.  

TUTU LETTER TO HANIYA REVISED JANUARY 2011

 In Cape Town, Archbishop Tutu  recorded a television appeal to Hamas to release Mohamed.

In his video appeal, accompanied by a letter, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner offers to go to Gaza or any other location personally if Hamas will hand him over.

The archbishop tells Hamas Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniya that this move would “enhance your stature in the outside world”.

Describng Abu Muailek as “innocent”, Archbishop Tutu notes that he had first made an appeal for the release of the militant-turned-dissident in a letter sent in May 2010.

Text of the Tutu Letter of May 27-2010

The 26-year-old prisoner has been held captive in Gaza for more than two-and-a-half years.  He has still not been convicted of any crime – even in a so-called military court whose officers were appointed by Hamas after its fighters overthrew the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces during four days of blooding clashes in June 2007.  The PA and most of the world considers these forces, and the courts they control, to be acting illegally.

The strongly pro-Palestinian international lawyer John Dugard, who was the United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories from 2001-2007, urged the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip to free Abu Muailek.  “I ask you to intervene to secure the release of Mohamed Abu Muailek. I know that he has expressed views contrary to the clear policies of the Governing Authority of Gaza. But in a democracy dissenting views must be tolerated,” wrote Professor Dugard, a longstanding member of the United Nations International Law Commission, in a letter to Hamas.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his defiance of apartheid and is currently leader of an international intervention group, The Elders, offered to go personally to Gaza or any other location if Hamas will free Abu Muailek.

The archbishop told Hamas’s Gaza ‘prime minister’ Ismail Haniya that the release of Abu Muailek “denoting his innocence, would “enhance your stature in the outside world”.

Longtime international correspondent Paul Martin, who has covered the conflict in Gaza for the BBC, Channel 4, Arte, The Times and Al Jazeera International,  was making a film about Abu Muailek’s change of heart – from militant rocket-firer to public critic of Hamas’s military tactics.   The film was shown eight times on BBC WORLD NEWS channel in 2010, but only after Martin himself had been detained by a Hamas internal security unit for 26 days.  He was held captive after going to a ‘military court’ in a failed attempt to give evidence in Abu Muaielk’s case.

A self-styled military court, comprising three uniformed Hamas ‘judges’ and a ‘prosecutor’ appointed by the Hamas ‘Internal Security ministry’, has continued to reject Abu Muailek’s requests for Martin to present his evidence.  It claims that Martin had been released due to international pressure and was still not acceptable to Hamas.

Martin said: “It is encouraging that Mohamed is still alive – largely, it seems, thanks to international publicity about his case, and the demands for his release coming from major figures and human rights groups. Yet it is sad that Hamas’s security agencies, and its military court, are behaving in a manner similar to those repressive regimes that have either fallen or are under pressure across North Africa and the Middle East.  Hamas should realise that no-one will take its  cause seriously if it continues to crush the right of young people in Gaza to speak their minds. Abu Muailek is being pilloried for changing his views.  It is time Hamas changed also, in the direction of freedom of speech and the rule of law.”

Tutu Pleads With Hamas Over Palestinian

4:17pm UK, Friday April 15, 2011

Dominic Waghorn, SKY NEWS Middle East correspondent

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, to release a Palestinian man on the second anniversary of his incarceration for allegedly spying for Israel.

Mohamed Abu Muailek: photo by World News & Features

The former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize winner has written a personal letter, seen by Sky News, to leader Ismail Haniya calling on Hamas to accept Mohamed Abu Muailek‘s innocence and release him.

Mr Abu Muailek was a member of a Palestinian rocket firing squad who had a radical change of heart.

In an interview with a British film-maker, he expressed opposition to firing rockets into Israel, saying it only led to more destruction being meted out to Palestinians.

Hamas arrested Abu Muailek – and the film-maker, Paul Martin, was also detained when he went to Gaza last year to testify in his military trial.

Martin was never charged, but instead was released AFTER 26 days. Abu Muailek is still in jail.

In its first comments on the case, Hamas gave a phone interview to Sky News.

Hamas spokesman Dr Ahmed Yusuf said the intervention by Dr Tutu would be taken seriously.

“We do believe,” he said, “that Desmond Tutu is a very honourable person who we respect and any effort he will exert will be respected.”

Dr Yusuf says the case has taken a long time to process but is about to come to a conclusion.

“God willing in a month or two the verdict of the court will be known.”

But he warned there is serious evidence against Abu Muailek, claiming he has confessed to collaborating with Israel.

His family suspect he was violently coerced into signing a document whose contents he was unaware of.

They adamantly deny allegations he is a collaborator.

Hamas has never answered the central weakness in its case against Abu Muailek: that were he a spy, he would be unlikely to draw attention to himself by being interviewed by foreigners and openly criticising Gaza’s authorities.

Hamas has imprisoned a number of Palestinians for allegedly spying for Israel and executed at least two of them.

Paul Martin told Sky News: “It is encouraging to hear a top Hamas official seemingly respecting Archbishop Tutu’s call for Mohamed’s release.

“The Archbishop says Mohamed is innocent and so does everyone involved with the case.”

Original SKY NEWS link: http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/15972943

MOHAMED LETTER RED CROSS FEB 2011

Mohamed Abu Muailek, now 26, has written a poignant letter from his Gaza prison that his brother is releasing exclusively to this website.  It was penned during a visit to the prisoner by the International Red Cross.

In a section of an International  Red Cross card  that only allows him to provide “family and/or private news”, he again protests his total innocence, and adds: “I’m certain that God is protecting me, and that He will not forget me.” 

He adds: “I learned not to trust anyone here after they falsely accused me, for good intentions are always misunderstood. I know exactly what is happening – and may God help me.”

Even though he has now spent two years in prison without any conviction by a Hamas-run military court, he concludes: “See you soon.”

He says receving any letters “gives me energy and renews my self-confidence, and assures me that God would never abandon me.”

Letters to Mohamed Abu Muailek from anywhere in the world can be sent to dissidentunderfire@gmail.com and we will make our best efforts to have them delivered to his prison or to his family in Gaza.

Here is a translation of the text, addressed to “Dear brother” and dated 9 February 2011:

Peace be upon you and God’s blessing. I wish to God that you are well and doing good.  I miss hearing your voice… I’m trying to contact you, but the procedures to use the prison’s public phone are a bit complicated. However, expect a phone call soon, God willing.

I thank you for standing by my side and for your efforts, and for your letters that give me energy and renew my self-confidence, and assure me that God would never abandon me.

I finished learning the fourth part of the Quran, and everyone here is impressed with my recitation and my proficiency in the recitation rules.  I also set myself a study plan inside prison, and I’m trying to gather the necessary books. I also teach some of the inmates English despite the lack of resources.  Unfortunately there aren’t any books or references about technology, except some radio and TV programmes, but they help in brainstorming many ideas, which I intend to realise once I am released.

The Red Cross delegation will bring me a copy of Gabriel García Márquez’s novel called “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.  They will bring it especially for me.  I’m trying to brush up my English and Spanish, which I learned several months before my imprisonment.  I will keep learning English even more, after you recommended me to do so.

I learned not to trust anyone here after they falsely accused me, for good intentions are always misunderstood.  I know exactly what is happening – and may God help me.  Rest assured that I have already set my path clearly before me, and I will never allow anyone to misunderstand me again.

Be confident that I’m always improving myself, and that I’m determined to walk the extra mile till “the wrongdoers soon know to what place of return they shall return” [citing a verse from theQuran].  I’m certain that God is protecting me, and that He will not forget me.

Allow me to promise you that we will meet soon, and to say that days are turning, and time is changing, and nights carry something new and surprising, and the Lord’s ways are mysterious.  I think that my imprisonment will serve a purpose, God only knows.

Please greet everyone for me, and I hope you send me some new pictures of you in your next letter.  Finally I say that I’m almost at the end of the road, and what God decides is good.  “There befalls not any calamity either in the earth or in your own persons, but it is recorded in a Book before We bring it into being — surely, that is easy for Allah .” [citing a verse from the Quran].

Please deliver my greetings to everyone and try to send me some magazines on artificial intelligence.

See you soon!

The Nobel Peace-prize winner was due to make a secret visit to Gaza on Friday April 8 2011 and to meet there with Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya.  But the Archbishop postponed his visit because he and other world statesmen were seeking to end the outbreak of conflict between rival factions in the strife-torn African state of Ivory Coast.

Instead, the Archbishop sent a letter and a video personally to Mr Haniya.  The Archbishop explained: “I am under pressure as Chairman of The Elders to try to go to the Ivory Coast.  I hope that I will be able to see you again.”

The Archbishop added: “I wanted just to appeal to you to release the young man Mohamed Abu Muailek and I think you would have done so, just as you agreed to my previous appeal.”

His video and written statement ended: “God Bless You.”

In an accompanying letter, the Archbishop tells Mr Haniya that this move would “enhance your stature in the outside world”.

Describing Abu Muailek, 26,  as “innocent”, Archbishop Tutu notes that he had first made an appeal for the release of the militant-turned-dissident in a letter sent in May 2010.   A second letter was sent in January this year, but was also not made public until now.

Archbishop Tutu has now recorded a television appeal to Hamas, also calling for the release of Abu Muailek.

He had appealed to Mr Haniya for the release of the film-maker Paul Martin, who had been detained in 2010 while preparing to give evidence in Abu Muailek’s military trial.  Martin was freed on March 11 2010 after 26 days in a Gaza prison-cell.

Hamas seized armed control of the territory in a bloody four-day overthrow of the rival Fatah security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.

Martin’s film, showing the transformation of Abu Muailek from militant to dissident, has been broadcast eight times on BBC World News, and a film about the struggle to free Abu Muailek is in preparation.

Freeing Abu Muailek – who was detained nearly two years ago – would provide the same boost to Hamas’s image, the Archbishop said, as had been achieved when the Gaza rulers had released Martin.

“Your image as the head of a democracy would be enhanced by such a release,” Archbishop Tutu wrote in May 2010, referring to Abu Muailek.

All these communications had been kept confidential until now.

Archbishop Tutu won his Nobel Peace Prize for anti-apartheid activity in 1984 and is chairman of The Elders  –  a group of former statesmen and stateswomen including ex-President Jimmy Carter of the USA and Mary Robinson, ex-President of Ireland.  Both the Archbishop and ex-President Carter have visited the Gaza Strip previously and have strongly condemned Israel’s pressure on its borders.

The assistant to Mr Haniya wrote back in June 2010 to the Archbishop, stating that Gaza’s rulers would consider the issues in due course.

But Hamas failed to communicate with the Archbishop since then.

FOR TEXTS OF LETTERS AND THE VIDEOS, SEE  “TUTU” IN THE VIDEO SECTION.

LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER ISMAIL HANIYA

International Law Commission

United Nations

Geneva

15 May 2011

Mr. Ismail Haniya

Gaza

PALESTINE

Dear Mr. Haniya

RE    MOHAMED ABU MUAILEK

I am writing to you about Mohamed Abu Muailek who has been in prison in Gaza for over two years (I understand that he was detained in April 2009).

I have a long and positive association with Gaza. From 2001 to 2007 I was Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council on the Human Rights Situation in Palestine. In this capacity I visited Gaza and reported to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly on Israel`s violation of human rights in Palestine in general and Gaza in particular. You will, I hope, recall that I met with you on one of my visits in 2006, in violation of UN rules about meeting with leaders of Hamas. In 2009 I led a Fact-Finding Mission established by the League of Arab States to investigate the situation in Gaza arising from Operation Cast Lead. We reported that Israel was guilty of both crimes against humanity and war crimes. Unlike Judge Goldstone I have not changed my mind or retracted my report!

My involvement in Gaza demonstrates my concern for the people of Gaza and the image of Gaza in the outside world.

It is in the light of this personal history that I ask you to intervene to secure the release of Mohamed Abu Muailek. I know that he has expressed views contrary to the clear policies of the Governing Authority of Gaza. But in a democracy dissenting views must be tolerated. I know that Gaza has always prided itself on its respect for freedom of speech. It seems to me, from the evidence I have received, that Mohamed’s main crime is the exercise of free speech on a politically very sensitive issue – that is, how best to resist Israeli occupation. To me this does not amount to treason but rather a genuine expression of how to most effectively resist the occupation.

Mohamed has now been in prison for over two years. This amounts to denial of due process of law, a principle respected by both the law of Gaza and international human rights standards. In my view it would be in the best interests of Gaza to release him without subjecting him to a trial, especially one in a military court without open access to the proceedings. Having spent two years in prison already for expressing dissenting views surely this will constitute sufficient punishment?

I am deeply concerned about the reputation of Gaza in the West, particularly at this time when Hamas and Fatah seek to work together to end the occupation. The reputation that Gaza has in the West does not accurately reflect Gazan society and the practices and principles of Gaza as I have experienced them. I would like to see Gaza respected by the international community, and particularly the West. It is in this spirit that I ask you to release Mohamed. Both considerations of justice and the image of Hamas require that he be freed. In my view it would not serve either justice or the interests of Hamas to put Mohamed on trial.

If, however, you decide that it is necessary to continue the trial process, I urge you to hold the trial in open court and to allow the journalist Paul Martin to give evidence on Mohamed’s behalf by video. Understandably, in the light of his experience when last he visited Gaza to secure Mohamed’s release, Martin, who is an internationally respected journalist and film-maker, will probably be reluctant to go to Gaza in person to testify on behalf of Mohamed. But his evidence can be obtained by video link.

Mr. Prime Minister, now is a good time to release Abu Muailek. Reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah should be accompanied by such gestures of humanity.

Yours sincerely,

JOHN DUGARD

To view John Dugard’s letter, click here

Since his arrest in April 2009, he has faced a military court accused of collaboration and espionage, for which there is a mandatory death penalty.

In his letter, of which Page 1 is reproduced here, Abu Muailek says he was

• beaten
• burned with cigarettes
• subjected to electric shocks, as well as
• deprived of sleep for extended periods.

Amnesty International protested last September to the Hamas authorities in Gaza.  The world’s premier legal and human rights organisation demanded that those alleged to have tortured Abu Muailek be arrested and brought to court.

After being released to the central prison in Gaza, Mohamed Abu Muailek spoke of ill-treatment and torture at the hands of the Hamas-controlled Internal Security. This lasted for two months, during which he was detained at a secret prison.

He was interrogated daily during those 60 days, and suffered both physical and psychological torture. The signs of torture were first noticed by his sister during her first visit of Mohamed in the central prison. He was forced – by the prison authorities – to wear a long-sleeved shirt to cover burn marks on his arms caused by putting out lit cigarettes by his interrogators.

Other torture methods, according to a letter written by Mohammed in prison, included deprivation of sleep, stringing him up from his arms for many hours, beatings and threats to injure family members.  A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross visited Mohamed and examined him. The team asserted that he has been subjected to torture by his captors from the Internal Security.

Also, Amnesty International called on Hamas – in a statement about the maltreatment of Mohamed – to refrain from torturing detainees and demanded an investigation into the alleged use of torture against Mohamed.

UNESCO MEETING APPLAUDS NEW MOHAMED FILM AND CONSIDERS MARTIN’S DETENTION AS INFRINGEMENT OF MEDIA FREEDOM.

PARIS, June 1 2010  –  The United Nations body charged with upholding media freedoms has given strong support to a veteran film-maker and Middle East expert detained by the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers.

The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) invited film-maker and broadcaster Paul Martin to address its members and staff on issues of media freedom that arose from his 26 days in a Gaza military prison.

Concluding a 90-minute presentation of his film and a prerecorded BBC HardTalk programme, Martin urged UNESCO to intervene actively whenever journalists were detained for their reportage.  He also suggested the media freedom division of UNESCO set up a system of journalists’ registration, subject to agreed standards, to help give the international and local media some measure of protection in conflict zones.

This was the invitation that drew in an enthusiastic and supportive audience:

Sent:jeudi 27 mai 2010 16:16
Subject:Paul Martin à l’UNESCO le lundi 31 mai 2010
Importance: High

Mesdames, Messieurs,

Je vous informe que le lundi 31 mai, le reporter britannique Paul Martin qui a été détenu par le Hamas début 2010 vient raconter son histoire à l’Unesco.

Paul Martin a été détenu pendant plus de trois semaines après s’être rendu à Gaza pour témoigner au procès d’un Palestinien accusé d’avoir collaboré avec Israël. M. Martin a été accusé d’avoir «violé la loi palestinienne et d’avoir porté atteinte à la sécurité dans la bande de Gaza».  Depuis sa libération, il déclare vouloir continuer son combat pour la liberté d’expression, considérant sa libération comme une victoire importante pour la liberté des journalistes de pouvoir produire des reportages équitables et précis sans intimidations et menaces de mort.

Organisé par le Secteur de la Communication et de l’information de l’Unesco, cette conférence fait partie d’une série de conférences qui ont pour but le développement du savoir du Secrétariat. En raison d’un grand intérêt, cette conférence est exceptionnellement ouverte aux participants de l’extérieur. La présentation sera en anglais et inclura la projection d’un film documentaire.

La conférence aura lieu au Siège de l’Unesco dans la salle XVI au bâtiment Bonvin à 11h30.  L’entrée se fait par l’annexe qui se trouve au 1 rue Mollis, Paris 75015 (Metro Ségur/ Sèvres Lecourbe).   Pour des raisons de sécurité une pièce d’identité vous sera demandée à l’entrée.  Veuillez demander à la sécurité de prévenir Mlle Victoria MOORHEAD de votre arrivée par téléphone (Secteur de la Communication et de l’information, poste 84243).  La salle XVI se trouve dans le bâtiment Bonvin.

Pour des raisons de sécurité, veuillez me communiquer les noms des personnes qui ont l’intention de participer.

Secteur de la Communication et de l’information

UNESCO
1, rue Miollis
75732 Paris cedex 15

The release of prisoners is expected as a result of the signing of agreements late in May 2011 in Cairo between the two main Palestinian political factions, Fatah (wihich controls the West Bank)  and Hamas (which controls the Gaza Strip).  faction, but also to free prisoners who have been locked up because they oppose violence and confrontation.

“Hamas security should immediately release Mohamed Abu Muailek, who is the prime example in Gaza of a young man who has defied the violence and hatred that dominates the political scene there,” said Paul Martin, an international correspondent who had filmed Abu Muailek’s story.

He urged Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join him in demanding that Hamas and Fatah free all dissidents held by either side. ”I’m worried they will make a deal to release their ‘own’ activists, yet ignore Mohamed because he disagrees with both movements in certain respects,” said Martin.  

Abu Muailek, now 26, has spent over two years in jail, accused but not convicted of spying, after he spoke out against Hamas for its rocket attacks on Israel.  Amnesty International has strongly criticised Hamas security services for their alleged torture of Abu Muailek during interrogations. 

In a film broadcast eight times on BBC WORLD NEWS, Abu Muailek had said  that these rocket attacks damaged Palestinian interests.

Abu Muailek  had been part of a militant group affiliated with Fatah that had fired rockets into Israeli civilian areas.  He had made no secret of his change of heart, and prior to his arrest had allowed himself to be filmed using the Internet to chat to an Israeli.  In the film “Rocket Man Under Fire” shown on the BBC, Abu Muailek said that this friendship had helped change his view of the need for violent conflict.

Film-maker Martin was detained when about to give evidence in Abu Muailek’s favour at a Hamas military court in February 2010.  He  spent 26 days in captivity before being released without charge.

A BBC radio interview about the execution of a pro-Palestinian Italian citizen in Gaza has led to more publicity for Mohamed Abu Muailek’s plight.

In one of three interviews he gave to the BBC on 15 April 2011, film-maker and long-time foreign correspondent Paul Martin discussed the  killing.  It had taken place after a statement  posted on Youtube  threatened to kill the man unless Hamas released Salafist prisoners.

Martin told the BBC about his encounters with Salafist Islamist hardliners, who had been in the cell adjoining his own during the 26 days he had spent in a Gaza Internal Security prison during February and March 2010.

He said their journey towards an extremist view of Islam was the exact opposite to the odyssey that Abu Muailek had travelled – from rocket-firing militant to a dissident who believed in peaceful coexistence.  He has been imprisoned for two years and allegedly tortured while a military trial has not been concluded.

Hamas later reported that its forces had killed two of the alleged murder suspects in a clash at a refugee camp.  These events have raised suspicion that the true killers were not in fact Salafists. The killing of the Italian was not carried out in the usual execution method of global Jihadists as sen on various videos from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan- slashing of the throat.  Instead he had been strangled.  Also, he was killed long before the ‘deadline’ said to have been set by the Islamist extremists for the detained Salafist leader’s release. 

Also, the Italian, a self-proclaimed pacifist, had recently been filmed showing support for protests inside Gaza that urged Hamas to end its rift with Fatah and promote democratic change.

Sources within Gaza have suggested that the Italian’s death stemmed from this recent ‘interference’  against Hamas, pointing the finger of blame at Hamas loyalists.

Martin gave his BBC interview before the killing of the two men who had allegedly carried out the Italian’s murder – killings that prevented any interrogation of the alleged murderers.

(Listen to the BBC World Service interview.)

BBC WD RADIO MARTIN SALAFISTS

SOT = Sound On (Video) Tape.

UPSOT = Natural Sound on (video) tape.

For much of 2008, Mohamed Abu Muailek would climb hills like this one in Gaza, not just to see into Israel, but to target it with rockets.

SOT MOHAMED ABU MUAILEK: This is the place that we used to fire rockets at southern Israel. Right there.

He’s changed his mind about rocket-firing at Israeli targets.  Now Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, have locked him up and accused him of collaborating with Israel.  He faces a possible death penalty.

SOT MOHAMED:  People must not be afraid to tell the truth.  Because I think these are the basics of a real Muslim. To be a peaceful man and to tell the truth… whether it kills him or it gives him more life.

Is Mohamed a traitor to his cause, or a prisoner of conscience?

TITLES AND MUSIC: ROCKET MAN UNDER FIRE.

PIECE TO CAMERA: SOT PAUL MARTIN:  When I began making this film in 2007, it was intended simply to be the story of a Palestinian Rocket-Firing group. But when one of its members, Mohamed, turned his back on the Brigades, I decided to continue following his story. He however was arrested, and when I decided to give evidence in his case, our stories became intertwined.  I myself was locked up, told I was a spy, and threatened with death.

UPSOT (praying): Allahu Akhbar.

I first came across Mohamed more than two years ago.   I filmed this young man, then aged 23, as part of a rocket-firing group preparing for a mission.

SOT MOHAMED: Our prayer helps us to face fears and to face death and to give meaning and be the idol that other people look for and will look at.

SOT ABU HAROON: We think that we will die any time, so we are brave because we want to meet our God after dying.

One of the big advantages for the group was Mohamed’s expertise with computers.  He would search for the best targets inside Israel.

SOT MOHAMED: We target rockets on Israeli cities but we focus on military bases.  Not on – exactly – civilians.

This was the first time Mohamed was actually going out to fire rockets.

SOT MOHAMED: About the rocket: it has a distance from 2 to 3 kilometres. It’s a short-range rocket.

The brigade swears allegiance to Fatah, the former rulers of the Gaza Strip, but it can only fire rockets when the current rulers, Hamas, give them permission. On the windscreen, pictures of dead rocket-firers killed action against Israel.  But Mohamed and Abu Haroon were determined to risk their lives to continue the fight. Danger of death loomed large – for rocket-firers, and the reporter…

SOT (Piece to Camera – CAPTION:  PAUL MARTIN Reporter):  Now the rockets have been taken out of the vehicle, they’ve been placed here pointing towards Israel which is just a few hundred metres away and they’re about to fire.

The Israelis would often track the rockets, and send out helicopters to strike back, killing the men as they drove away.  But on the mission we filmed there was a technical problem.

SOT MOHAMED: There’s something wrong with the detonators.

PAUL MARTIN:  You’re abandoning the firing?

MOHAMED: Yes.

PAUL MARTIN:  Do you think these rocket firings achieve anything?

MOHAMED: Yes, they achieved the withdrawal from Gaza.

PAUL MARTIN: You think the rocket firing achieved the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza?

MOHAMED: Yes.

Abu Haroon and his group were determined, though, not to give up.

(Small rocket is fired)

SOT MOHAMED: Next time I hope to hit an Israeli base.   Soldiers not citizens.

PAUL MARTIN: You’re going to do it again?

MOHAMED:  That’s for sure.

(CAPTION: Sderot, Israel, January 2009)

Militants in Gaza have been getting much more powerful rockets than the ones we filmed.  But even the smaller types of rockets fired into Israel by groups like Abu Rish can cause panic, injury and occasionally deaths.

UPSOT/CAPTION:  MICKY ROSENFELD, Israeli Police Inspector:  There’s a school just behind me.  Only 50 metres from where we’re standing.  More than 200 children were in there studying at the time of the impact.

The Israelis have far greater fire power.

(HUGE BANG – Caption: January 2009)

Determined to end rocket-fire into their territory once and for all, they attacked targets in Gaza by air and by land.  Over a thousand Palestinians were killed. Since the war, rocket attacks into Israel have dramatically reduced.

When I got back in after the conflict ended late in January last year, [OMITTED FROM FINAL SCRIPT: I was surprised how little damage was visible in Gaza City itself.]  I met Mohamed again – by chance.  He told me he had refused to take part in the conflict. He wanted to explain why, and this time he was willing to be filmed without a face-mask.

SOT MOHAMED: I used to believe that shooting rockets is OK. But shooting rockets is never good any more, because look at what it brought for our people.

His main concern was that the rocket firings were putting Gaza’s own civilians in direct danger.

SOT MOHAMED:  The brigades used to fire from populated areas, and I think that this is not right – shooting from populated areas.  Because this will give the Israelis the chance and the reason to shoot these populated areas – whether they get any fighters or not.

As a schoolboy and at college, Mohamed was a high-flyer – in his technology class he came top…

SOT/CAPTION: YASMIN, MOHAMED’S SISTER: This is a golden shield that he got.  He was the first in his college of science and technology in Gaza.  He used to be the first in school.  I know that he was a very good boy.

Mohamed grew up in a family strongly supporting Fatah – led by the legendary Yasser Arafat. After college, he joined a militant group.  He would have taken part in a swearing-in ceremony like this one. After that, leaving such a group is tantamount to becoming a traitor

According to Human Rights Watch, during and just after the recent war at least 32 men were accused of being traitors, or collaborators, and executed. Their families tend their graves.

SOT UNIDENTIFIED RELATIVE OR FRIEND: [This is the grave of a man  accused of being a collaborator. He was killed by an iron bar and fists.]

The next time I saw Mohamed, he told me he was becoming increasingly afraid, and had decided he must leave Gaza.  One of his good-byes was to a surprising friend.

SOT MOHAMED: I’m waiting for him to get online.

Mohamed is talking to an Israeli.

SOT MOHAMED: Actually our friendship goes back more than three years.  He helped me going through a lot of things.  Especially he supported me during the war.  He calmed me when I was scared.  He was all the way up to listen to me, whenever I had to talk to him.

PAUL MARTIN: How did you get to meet an Israeli?  Gazans these days don’t get to meet Israelis.

MOHAMED: Actually I met him on line through an online job.   So we got to know each other and finally became good friends.

PAUL MARTIN: At the same time as you were communicating with him, you were also firing rockets.   What a contradiction!

MOHAMED: Yes, I was talking to him but I couldn’t ever mention these things to him but at some point he suggested that whatever I’m doing, at some point I must be forgiven and I must forgive myself and to feel peace inside.

DAN; Hello…

MOHAMED: Yes, how are you?   You look like an alien!

Dan, the Israeli friend and fellow computer enthusiast, was willing to be recorded having this Internet chat – but, worried about getting into trouble with the Israeli authorities, he decided to use computer wizardry to avoid being recognised.

UPSOT MOHAMED: I’m fine, and how are you?

It was this growing friendship from afar that helped Mohamed change his mind about his armed attacks on Israel – having an Israeli friend and at the same time firing rockets into Israeli civilian areas, just did not add up.

SOT MOHAMED: He helped me change a lot of ideas I used to have… like the Israeli people are just born to kill.  Yes, he changed that a lot.  I felt the human side of them.

SOT PAUL MARTIN: What had made you think that the Israeli people were born to kill?

SOT MOHAMED: Actually it’s a mix of everything that made me think they were blood lust people.  It’s our education first and the media.  The media has a big impression on people – they get them thinking Israeli people just want to kill Palestinian people.  And that’s very wrong.

This sort of chat is putting Mohamed at considerable risk.

SOT MOHAMED: It’s not easy if you get caught talking to an Israeli person.  First people will have bad impression – maybe he’s collaborating with them.  It could lead to them arresting you.

ST PAUL MARTIN: If you’re considered a collaborator what happens to you?

SOT MOHAMED:  It’s a death sentence here.

SOT PAUL MARTIN:   Death?

SOT MOHAMED:  Yes, without a court.

SOT PAUL MARTIN: Has it happened?

SOT MOHAMED:  Yes it’s happened a lot in Gaza.  No-one who’s ever been accused as a collaborator has been executed by the Palestinian authority – officially.  Unofficially people get kidnapped in the street and they just shoot him.

Mohamed now tells his internet friend about his exit plan.   He is hoping and praying he can leave the Gaza Strip today.

SOT DAN: Congratulations…Mazeltov in Hebrew.

SOT MOHAMED: You can congratulate me when I’m outside – talking to you from Egypt – I’m hoping it will be tonight.

SOT DAN: Where are going to go, what are going to do?

SOT MOHAMED: I should start looking for jobs – in Europe – maybe in the UK.  I’m a good technician and I’m very wanted in Europe.

SOT DAN: When they get to know you, it will work fine..

SOT MOHAMED: Yeh. Cross my fingers …

SOT DAN: Both of them.

SOT MOHAMED: Yeh both of them.

END OF PART ONE

PART TWO

The fighters in Mohamed’s former militant group, the Aburish Brigade, continued to prepare their weaponry for any renewed conflict with Israel.

CAPTION: Filmed in 2009

SOT ABU HAROON: These rockets we are shooting at Israel.   We don’t know who is killed.   We don’t know where it drops.   ’Cos there is no electronics here.  It’s … simple.

Mohamed has turned his back on the Brigade, and they are furious with him. So are Hamas.  Mohamed’s recently been interrogated by Hamas security, and now feels he has nowhere left to turn.

SOT MOHAMED: After I was interrogated and after I saw the bad treatment I had – it was very bad treatment – then I decided to leave this country, once and forever.  And I’m not looking back.

Mohamed was on his way to potential freedom. But getting across the border into neighbouring Egypt would prove very difficult.  At the Gaza side of the border crossing Mohamed slipped through the gates into a holding area, no-man’s land – so far so good. At the check-in a Hamas officer gave him some not too good news.

SOT HAMAS OFFICER: The terminal is closed from the morning.

PAUL MARTIN: No Palestinians..?

SOT OFFICER: No Palestinians, never.  Only for the Europeans.   He can’t travel because he’s a Palestine.  You can travel as a European at anytime but he can’t – it’s not possible.

SOT PAUL MARTIN (to Mohamed): So looks like you have no chance…?

SOT MOHAMED: Never say never.   Never give up.

SOT OFFICER:  So we are very sorry for that.

Still, Mohamed managed to bamboozle the officials – by handing in his passport, but still shimmying past the guards onto a waiting shuttle-bus.

UPSOT MOHAMED: I talked to the one in charge, a security guy.  I social-engineered them…. (Laughs)

The journey towards the frontier with Egypt…. So near and yet so far.  Just before the border, Mohamed was discovered and sent back.    Mohamed was to remain trapped in Gaza – a dissident in a place where opposition or criticism of the regime can mean big trouble.

A few days later, Mohamed called me.  Hamas’s internal security were summoning him again.

PHONECALL:

PAUL MARTIN:  Did they say they were going to arrest you or interrogate you or what?

MOHAMED: It says in the paper: ‘We want you for an issue with us.’

PAUL MARTIN: What do you intend to do?

MOHAMED: Actually I’m going to hide for a couple of weeks until I find a way out.

PAUL MARTIN: Wow.

The net was closing on him – in the small parameters of the Gaza Strip no-one can evade the security services for long.  Mohamed feared the worst – and sent this alarming text message.

TEXT MESSAGE: “I may be executed in Gaza in the next days. Forgive me Paul and Goodbye. Mo.”

It was to be his last desperate contact with the outside world before he was caught and detained in a high -security military prison.

His sister says she finally discovered where Mohamed was being held, two months after his arrest.

SOT YASMIN:  Homeland Security of Hamas take him for 60 days.  Until this day, he’s in a civic prison and we didn’t know why they took him and they didn’t give us any reason why they took him.

Yasmin gets some consolation from a music video Mohamed recorded in better times.

She’d been allowed some prison visits but told me Mohamed was deeply pessimistic about his chances of survival.

SOT PAUL MARTIN: Were you afraid for his life, that he might be killed?

SOT YASMIN ABU MUAILEK: Yes, I was very afraid.   He said that they hurt him and that they threaten him that they are going to execute him.

It emerged that Mohamed had been charged with being a collaborator and a spy, and was undergoing a military trial behind closed doors. In February this year I took the decision to go to Gaza to try and give evidence on Mohamed’s behalf.

PAUL MARTIN PIECE TO CAMERA : I wanted to show some of this film to the military court – and point out that surely no self-respecting spy would draw attention to himself by talking on camera to a Western journalist criticising his regime.       I never got the chance.  As I arrived at the building I was arrested, handcuffed, interrogated under threat of death, and held in isolation for 26 days.

I was suddenly released without charge, and handed over to the British consul.

CAPTION: 11 March 2010

Meanwhile, at a press conference in Gaza City a top Hamas leader continued making allegations against me.

SOT MAHMOUD ZAHAR, Hamas ‘Foreign Minister’:  He met criminals.   He tried to play in dangerous things that threatened the lives and the interest of the Palestinian Authority here.

SOT REPORTER: And the trial of the man that Paul was attending, Mohamed Abu Muailek, is that continuing?

SOT ZAHAR: Paul came to defend him and by investigation they have good relations — and good activities.

CAPTION: 11 March 2010

[OMITTED FROM FINAL EDIT:  PAUL MARTIN (to reporters): My release is a great victory for freedom of the media to be able to follow difficult stories in war zones and difficult areas without the fear of arrest, detention or intimidation.]

Days after I got out, two men from Fatah, who’d been in the jail cell opposite mine, were shot by firing squad as alleged collaborators.

A few weeks later, I met Mohamed’s brother who lives in Europe.   He said Mohamed had managed to phone him from the toilet of his jail, using a mobile phone that another prisoner had smuggled in.

SOT YASSER ABU MUAILEK:  He told me that his torturers, his interrogators had threatened him, threatened to kill him without a trial.   Even he was found not guilty by the court, even if he was freed from prison and found innocent, somebody will kill him and this somebody will definitely be from Hamas.

SOT PAUL MARTIN: Hamas are saying that they have evidence that he is a spy and that he has admitted it himself in a confession.

SOT YASSER: I believe that any confession that Mohamed made was made first of all under torture and all Mohamed did was sign what he couldn’t read and he couldn’t see.

SOT PAUL MARTIN: When you first heard that Mohamed was in the civilian prison, your sister visited him.  What condition was he in?

SOT YASSER:  She was shocked to see the man sitting in front of her.   He was forced to wear a long sleeved shirt to hide the burn marks on his arms.  He seemed cocooned in himself.  Only when they got permission to be with him for 5 minutes in a closed room together, where he was able to open up and cry the whole time.  She saw a human wreck sitting in front of her.

SOT PAUL MARTIN:  There are lots of people arrested and held as political prisoners in many countries.   Why should the West take any interest in this one?

SOT YASSER: Because Mohamed is a prisoner of conscience.  He is a critic of the system, a critic of the regime, a critic of the methods that are glorified by this militant group and that are considered an act of heroism there.   The only way to discredit this only voice of opposition in the Gaza Strip is to slap the charge of collaboration against him – which is the most shameful of charges against anyone in Gaza.

Yasser’s been offered backing from British Members of Parliament who aim to press Hamas to save his brother from execution.   He’s also won support from South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

His brother is now in the final stages of his military trial.  But long before his arrest, Mohamed had expressed his determination to hold true to his new beliefs.

SOT MOHAMED:  They will say that I am a collaborator and I don’t care much because I know that I am on the right side and that I’m telling the truth for the people to know.  That they must not be afraid to tell the truth because these are the basics of a real Muslim – to tell the truth and be a peaceful man whether it kills him or gives him new life.

Hamas – the people whose methods Mohamed condemns  — now hold his fate in their hands.

END TITLES,  PLUS CAPTION: “Mohamed Abu Muailek has been in jail since April 2009. The verdict in his trial is imminent.”

CAPTION AND LOGO:  WORLD NEWS & FEATURES 2010)

Seeking the support  of Egypt’s revolutionary young activists  Mohamed Abu Muailek’s brother has made a powerful plea for the Gaza dissident’s release.

On a visit to Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square Yasser Abu Muailek portrayed his imprisoned younger brother, 26, as a symbol of the computer-savvy youth of the Arab Awakening sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

As the second anniversary of his younger brother’s detention loomed, Abu Muailek had travelled to Egypt to launch a concerted effort for solidarity from the Youth of Tahrir Square.  He met several of them and briefed them on Mohamed’s plight.

Just after dawn on Tuesday April 5 2011 a young photographer who had been deeply involved in the protests that toppled Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 showed Yasser Abu Muailek around the now world-famous square.

It was there that massive crowds had staged demonstrations in the turbulent month leading up to the resignation of Mubarak on February 11 2011 and the military takeover – and where many peaceful protesters had been killed and injured.

Yasser Abu Muailek stated:  ”It’s so emotional to be here, knowing that Egyptians managed to liberate themselves – just as I hope we will be able, with that same energy, to liberate my brother.  And who knows?  We may eventually see liberation from the iron grip of dictatorships and repressive regimes around the region.”

He pointed out that, while at first convinced it was right to fire rockets at civilians, Mohamed Abu Muailek  had later broken out of the cycle of inward-looking hate and violence inside Gaza through what became his lifeline:  the Internet.  This lifeline  could though, Yasser noted, lead to Mohamed’s death.

The Gaza dissident has been imprisoned for two years while his trial has dragged on in a ‘military court’ — where the odds of a not-guilty verdict are heavily stacked against anyone accused of ‘spying’.

Amnesty International has called for a full investigation into “extremely serious” claims that he has been tortured, and has demanded that the alleged torturers themselves be brought to trial.

HAMAS MUST ALSO ENSURE MOHAMED GETS FAIR TRIAL, SAYS JUSTICE WATCHDOG.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS CLEARED THIS STATEMENT FOR PUBLICATION:

We wrote to the Attorney General of the Hamas de facto administration (Mohammed Abed) raising our concerns about Mohammed Abu Muailek’s case on 16 September 2010. In particular we raised our concerns about:

• Mohammed’s initial period of incommunicado detention;
• Mohammed’s allegations of torture and other ill-treatment;
• death threats made against Mohammed;
• the use of a statement alleged to have been obtained under torture in court; and
• the lack of investigation and accountability regarding members of the Hamas security units alleged to have both made death threats against Mohammed and to have used torture and other ill-treatment.

We reminded Hamas of:

• the absolute prohibition on torture;
• guarantees of the right to a fair trial, including the right to be defended by a lawyer of one’s own choosing and to be able to call and question witnesses; and
• provisions in the Palestinian Basic Law safeguarding detainees’ rights to have contact with a lawyer without delay and not to be subjected to duress or torture, and makes clear that all statements or confessions obtained through any duress or torture must be considered null and void.

We urged Hamas to:

• ensure that the allegations of torture and other ill-treatment made by Mohammed Abu-Muailek are investigated fully and thoroughly and without delay, that information obtained under torture or other duress is not used as evidence against him at his trial, and that any officials or others responsible for his torture face criminal prosecution; and
• take all possible steps to ensure that members of Internal Security and other security units, and members of armed groups in the Gaza Strip, are informed and understand that they must refrain from such attacks or threats and will be held fully to account if they commit unlawful actions.

We regard the allegations of torture and unfair trial as extremely serious.

The AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 2011 REPORT stated:

Arbitrary arrests and detentions

PA security forces in the West Bank arbitrarily arrested and detained suspected Hamas supporters, and Hamas security forces in Gaza arbitrarily arrested and detained suspected Fatah supporters. In both areas, the authorities gave the security forces wide powers of discretion, including to arrest and detain suspects in breach of the law and to torture and otherwise ill-treat them with impunity. The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) reported receiving complaints of more than 1,400 arbitrary arrests in the West Bank and more than 300 in Gaza.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees by security and police forces were reported – by the PA’s Preventive Security force and the General Intelligence Service in the West Bank; and by Internal Security in Gaza. The ICHR said it had received over 150 complaints of torture or other ill-treatment by the PA in the West Bank and over 200 by Hamas in Gaza. New reports emerged of cases from 2009.

In both areas, torture and other ill-treatment were committed with impunity. In a rare prosecution, five members of the PA’s General Intelligence Service were tried during 2010 in connection with the death in custody of Haitham Amr in June 2009, but were acquitted by a military court.

• Mohammed Baraka Abdel-Aziz Abu-Moailek was reported to have been tortured by Internal Security officials in Gaza. He was held incommunicado for more than 50 days after his arrest in April 2009 on suspicion of “collaboration” with Israel. He said he was tortured with electric shocks, beaten on the soles of his feet (the falaqa method), burned with cigarettes and threatened with death to force him to confess. He remained on trial and in detention at the end of 2010.
• Ahmed Salhab, a mechanic, was reported to have been tortured following arrest in September by PA security officials, allegedly for suspected association with Hamas. He said he was tied tightly in stress positions for long periods (the shabeh method). This exacerbated a serious back injury caused by previous torture by PA security officials. He was released without charge in October.

One death in custody following an assault by police was reported in Gaza.

• Nazira Jaddou’a al-Sweirki died on 1 January shortly after she was hit on the back and otherwise assaulted by police in Gaza. Three of her adult sons were beaten and two were detained on suspicion of supporting Fatah.

Justice system

In the West Bank, the security authorities failed to comply with many court orders to release detainees. The PA continued to prohibit former members of the judiciary and police from working for the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza. In Gaza, the Hamas administration continued to use alternative prosecutors and judges who lacked appropriate training, qualifications and independence.

Death penalty

In Gaza, military and criminal courts sentenced at least 11 people to death. Five men were executed after trials that failed to meet international fair trial standards – two in April who had been convicted of “collaboration” with Israel; and three in May who had been convicted of murder.

Freedom of expression and association

Both the PA in the West Bank and the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza maintained tight controls on freedom of expression, and harassed and prosecuted journalists, bloggers and other critics.

ENDS EXTRACTS

ABU MUAILEK’S BROTHER YASSER MET WITH LORD DAVID STEEL, FORMER HEAD OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AT THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, WESTMINSTER.   THE DAY BEFORE, ABU MUAILEK HAD HELPED LAUNCH A ‘SAVE MOHAMED’ CAMPAIGN AT THE LONDON PREMIERE OF A FILM ABOUT HIS BROTHER.  

SENIOR MEMBERS OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY HOLD SEVERAL IMPORTANT POSITIONS INSIDE THE NEWLY-ELECTED COALITION GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER.   LORD STEEL PROMISED TO USE HIS “GOOD CONNECTIONS” WITH THE HAMAS RULERS OF THE GAZA STRIP TO HIGHLIGHT MOHAMED ABU MUAILEK’S PLIGHT.

THE MP HAS ALREADY WRITTEN A LETTER TO A SENIOR FIGURE IN THE HAMAS AUTHORITY THERE, AND PLANS TO FOLLOW UP.  LORD STEEL SAID HE IS ALSO WILLING TO APPEAR ON TELEVISION ALONGSIDE FILM-MAKER PAUL MARTIN.  THE MP WAS ONE OF A FIVE-PERSON PARLIAMENTARY GROUP WHO TRAVELED TO GAZA AND MET HAMAS LEADERS IN MARCH THIS YEAR.  ANOTHER MEMBER OF THAT DELEGATION, THE RECENTLY RE-ELECTED LABOUR MP ANDY SLAUGHTER, A BARRISTER, HAS ALSO CONFIRMED HE IS WILLING TO SUPPORT A CAMPAIGN TO FREE OR SAVE MOHAMED.

‘I AM VERY ELATED AT THIS SUPPORT,” SAID YASSER ABU MUAILEK. “HAMAS RESPECTS PEOPLE WHO APPEAR TO THEM TO WIELD POLITICAL POWER, AND THIS COULD VERY MUCH HELP MY BROTHER TO SURVIVE – OR EVEN TO GET OUT OF JAIL AND OUT OF GAZA.”

(Source: Ma’an Images  )

A second man was found guilty of treason and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

Both sentences were accepted unanimously by the military panel, but are appealable.

Under Palestinian law, the death penalty must be accepted by the president. On April 15, 2010, however, the government in Gaza executed two men that had been found guilty of collaboration with Israel.

The men were executed early in the morning, following a last visit with their families, and their bodies brought to the Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The last execution given the go-ahead by the Palestinian president was in 2005. Since then, sentences have been commuted to life in prison or hard labor.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights called the executions “a grave and unjustified violation of the right to life and a form of torture and cruel and inhumane treatment,” and criticized the use of the death penalty under a shaky justice system.

Ends Ma’an.

NOTE: Whether the person sentenced to death is Mohamed Abu Muailek has been checked and it has been established that he is still alive.  However the defiance that this appears to indicate – another News item quotes UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay’s condemnation last year of two executions of alleged collaborators  – does not bode well for anyone currently on trial for alleged crimes against the safety of the Gaza or its rulers.  Human Rights Watch documented ‘at least 32′ summary executions in the period around or just after the recent war of December 2008-January 2009 alone.

Friday 24/12/2010 – 23:30
Saturday 25/12/2010 – 02:30, 11:30
Sunday 26/12/2010 – 14:30

‘THIS IS A GREAT ENDORSEMENT BY THE BBC OF THE FILM’S ORIGINAL QUALITY,” SAID PAUL MARTIN, WHO MADE THE FILM AND WAS ARRESTED BY HAMAS IN THE COURSE OF ITS COMPLETION IN 2010. “WE ARE VERY KEEN TO GIVE MOHAMED A CHANCE TO SURVIVE, BECAUSE, LIKE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND LIKE ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU, WE FEEL HE CANNOT HAVE A FAIR TRIAL UNDER CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES.”

BBC WORLD NEWS TRANSMITTED THE FILM FOUR TIMES IN JUNE 2010.

SEE FULL ‘ROCKET MAN UNDER FIRE’ TRANSCRIPT.

The full tranbscript of the programme was carried on BBC WORLD’s website.  It decided not to carry the following article as it felt this was not “objective” enough:

By Paul Martin

On Monday 21 June 2010, BBC World TV also carried a half hour programme on “HARDTALK”.

HARDtalkHARDtalk talks to newsmakers and personalities from across the globe.

BBC HARDTALK ran 4 times:
04h30 on 21 June
09h30 on 21 June
16h30 on 21 June
21h30 on 21 June

* UK timing. (GMT +1)

On 19 & 20 June 2010, ROCKET MAN UNDER FIRE ran 4 times:
10h30 on 19 June
22h30 on 19 June
03h30 on 20 June
16h30 on 20 June

*UK timing (GMT +1)

A worldwide DVD release is also planned.

• • Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 April 2012 17.51 BST

Palestinian children walk past pro-Hamas murals in Gaza. Photograph: Abed Rahim Khatib/Demotix/Corbis

Human rights groups have condemned the execution by the Hamas government in Gaza of three prisoners at the weekend, and are demanding that the death sentence of a fourth be commuted.

The three men, identified only by their initials, were hanged on Saturday at a Hamas security base in Gaza City. The cases were unrelated: WJ, 27, had been convicted of treason by collaborating with Israel; MB, 49, had been convicted of murder; and MA, 20, had been convicted of abducting, raping and killing a child.

All three had exhausted the right to appeal, according to the interior ministry in Gaza. The victims’ families refused to forgive the men or accept compensation in lieu of their executions, which were aimed at “protecting the safety of the public”, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The execution of a fourth prisoner, Jamil Zakaria Juha, 29, who was sentenced to death by firing squad in December for complicity in murder, is expected imminently. The supreme military court in Gaza upheld Juha’s sentence in February and he has no further appeals.

Since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007, after an electoral victory and a bloody power struggle with its political rivals Fatah, the government has executed at least 11 prisoners – six for collaboration and treason, and five for murder.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank also permits capital punishment but has not carried out any executions since 2005. In total, 24 death sentences have been carried out in Gaza and the West Bank since the creation of the PA in 1994.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the weekend’s executions highlighted the need for a moratorium on death sentences in Gaza. The practice was “cruel and inhuman punishment [and] the persistence of unfair trials made the executions particularly egregious,” it said.

HRW said it had documented cases where military courts failed to examine evidence pointing to confessions coerced under torture as well as other violations of detainees’ rights. The Independent Commission for Human Rights in Gaza had documented 22 allegations of torture in custody in February alone, HRW said.

 

The executions were also condemned by the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. It said the death sentences had been carried out without being ratified by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, which violated the constitution.

The death sentence was a “grave and unjustified violation of the right to life and a form of torture and cruel and inhumane treatment”, it said.

Amnesty condemned the three executions, saying it was particularly concerned that the men “were executed after sentences issued and ratified by military and criminal courts in Gaza which fail to meet international fair trial standards”. It appealed for all pending death sentences to be commuted.

The law permitting the death sentence in Gaza dates back to 1936, when Palestine was under British Mandate rule. It prescribed the method of execution as hanging. The 1970 Palestine Liberation Organisation Rrevolutionary penal code allows the death sentence to be imposed for 42 offences.

Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers sentence Palestinian to death for collaborating with Israel

By Associated Press, Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 2:55 PM

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A Hamas official in Gaza says the militant group has sentenced a local Palestinian to death for collaborating with Israel.

The official said the man was sentenced Wednesday to death by firing squad at a military court in Gaza. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak with reporters.

Palestinians who collaborate with Israeli intelligence are widely loathed within Palestinian society.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights’ says Hamas has issued 36 death sentences since it seized Gaza from the rival Fatah party in 2007. About 15 executions have actually been carried out.

The Palestinian rights group says it is “gravely concerned” over the continued death sentences imposed by both Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Hamas security services in Gaza have gone ahead with two more executions in defiance of a halt demanded previously by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

The Hamas armed wing’s website reported that during the morning of July 26^th 2011 security services executed two men whom the Islamist militant movement called “collaborators accused of spying for the Israeli occupation authorities”. It said an appeal by the two men had been rejected days before the executions.

It alleged the men had helped Israel to assassinate Dr Abdelaziz Rantisi,  a senior Hamas official,  in 2004, as well as another Hamas operative the previous year.

Last year Hamas began executing alleged collaborators.  Before that, no officially-sanctioned death sentences had been carried out in Gaza since 2005, though alleged collaborators were often attacked and killed either in the street or after short imprompu interrogations.  [See HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Report, 2009, below.]

Just after Hamas announced two executions in April 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement saying: “I call on Hamas to reconsider its position and exhibit respect for the international community’s firm rejection of the death penalty, to abolish its use in Gaza, and to fully uphold and promote the right to life. “   Mrs Pillay was referring to a widely supported 2007 UN General Assembly resolution, which calls for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

“One absolute restriction is that the death penalty can only be imposed after observing fair trial guarantees in duly constituted courts, which is practically impossible in current circumstances in Gaza,” Mrs Pillay said. “For that reason, I urge Hamas to halt all further planned executions.”

Mrs Pillay has not yet reacted to the new executions.

ENDS

REPORT FROM OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF AL QASSAM BRIGADES, ARMED WING OF HAMAS:

PREVIOUS REPORT FROM PALESTINIAN NEWS AGENCY MA’AN:

Bethlehem – Ma’an – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Friday urged the defacto Gaza government not to carry out further executions and to abolish the use of the death penalty.

During the night of 14-15 April [2010], two prisoners accused of crimes associated with the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the government of Israel were executed in Gaza.

“I am deeply concerned by recent statements by senior Hamasofficialsthat several death sentences may be carried out soon,” the independent expert said. “It is extremely disappointing that Hamasis contemplating a return to the use of the deathpenalty, despite the fact that no officially-sanctioned death sentences have been carried out in Gaza since 2005.

The high commissioner said she was alarmed by unconfirmed reports that several more prisoners may be executed soon. OHCHR has received information that on Wednesday Hamasauthorities called the families of a number of individuals sentenced to death, saying that they could make their last visit to their sons. It is believed that the two people who were executed were part of this group of prisoners.

On 24 March, the de facto government in Gaza made public the decision to carry out the execution of several alleged criminals. Four days later, they announced that a process to ratify such death sentences had been initiated, notwithstanding applicable law that requires all such sentences to be ratified by the president of the Palestinian Authority.

“I call on Hamastoreconsider its position and exhibit respect for the international community’s firm rejection of the death penalty, to abolish its use in Gaza, and to fully uphold and promote the right to life,” said Pillay, referring to a widely supported 2007 UN General Assembly resolution, which calls for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Furthermore, the high commissioner emphasized that under international human rights law, the right to life is protected, and the use of the death penalty is restricted to the most serious crimes under extremely limited circumstances.

“One absolute restriction is that the death penalty can only be imposed after observing fair trial guarantees in duly constituted courts, which is practically impossible in current circumstances in Gaza,” Pillay said. “For that reason, I urge Hamas to halt all further planned executions.”

The UN human rights chief, who strongly supports the global trend toward the abolition of the death penalty, said she welcomed the current draft law under consideration by the Palestinian Authority, which seeks to abolish capital punishment.

Palestinian Human Rights Groups denounce Gaza executions

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Palestinian human rights groups have denounced Thursday’s executions of two collaborators in Gaza.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reiterated in a statement its position rejecting the death penalty, which it called “a grave and unjustified violation of the right to life and a form of torture and cruel and inhumane treatment.”

The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza executed by firing squad Nasser Salama Abu Fraih, 35, from Jabaliya and Mohammed Ibrahim Isma’il (As-Sabe), 36, from Rafah.

These death sentences were carried out without the ratification of the president, which is required under Palestinian law and constitutes a violation of the law and constitution, the PCHR added.

However, the group reiterated its position that the PA has a duty to prosecute those accused of collaboration with Israel.

“Abolishment of the death penalty does not mean being tolerant of criminals; however, an appropriate deterrent penalty which complies with international law and maintains our humanity, should be considered,” the statement said.

Thursday’s executions were the first official executions in Gaza since Hamas’ takeover in 2007.

According to Human Rights Watch, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, 32 Palestinians were executed without trial by Palestinian armed groups apparently associated with Hamas, for allegedly providing Israel with information.

Gazans charged with collaboration are unable to mount a proper defense or to appeal the verdicts and punishments imposed upon them, according to the group.

Last week, the General Prosecution Office in Gaza said that ratification of outstanding death sentences was not only necessary but that it was a legal duty. In a public statement issued on 25 March, Gaza Attorney General MohammedAbedannounced that during the previous two months, his office began processing the death sentences of those convicted of collaboration and murder.

Two days earlier, Gaza Interior Minister Fathi Hammad said in a radio interview that his ministry had decided to execute prisoners convicted of collaboration despite the objections of local human rights organizations.

In May 2009, Hamas announced that it was establishing a committee composed of legal advisors and officials in the defacto Ministry of Justice who would be responsible for ratifying  death sentences in Gaza. The General Prosecution Office announced Sunday that the cabinet had a duty to help ratify death sentences in order to implement outstanding death sentences.

The last known [official] executions in Gaza were carried out in June and July 2005, prior to the establishment of the de facto government in Gaza.

Source: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=276753

At Least 32 Palestinians Killed During and After Israeli Offensive

The Carter Center said it “congratulates the Government of Egypt for their success in brokering the historic intra-Palestinian reconciliation agreement announced on April 27″.

Full statement on April 29, 2011:

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/palestinian-reconciliation-042911.html

NOTE: The Carter Center monitored municipla elections in October  2012 and was also critical.  In a report entitled “Palestine Electoral Study Mission Urges Political Reconciliation”, it summary stated that the poll was affected by the “political impasse between the two leading Palestinian political movements, and the continued erosion of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms by political actors in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “

The same repression by Hamas Internal Security agents has been documented ever since the bloody four-day clashes during June 2007.  In those, Hamas fighters overthrew their rivals Fatah, who were in charge of the  security services controlled by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. The Hamas Internal Security used extensive detention and interrogation techniques similar to those employed in the Fatah-controlled West Bank, according to a number of human rights reports.

Walid Abu Delfa was one victim.  He and his brother Khalil were detained in Gaza City by Hamas for ‘security reasons’, a fact admitted to the BBC Panorama programme by the Hamas Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniya.   Both men were then seriously assaulted by Hamas security personnel.

Walid died while Khalil survived.  Despite the risks of further detention or torture Khalil and his family spoke to Panorama about their ordeal.

As he was being beaten, Khalil says he heard the cries of his brother from the next cell.  “I could hear my brother’s voice, the same thing was happening to him. He was calling to me over and over. He was asking for help from God. Suddenly his voice stopped,” Khalil recalled.

The behaviour of the Hamas Internal Security agents in arresting dissident Mohamed Abu Muailek and the international film-maker chronicling his story, Paul Martin, follows a long-established and continuing pattern of detentions and executions.   “What has kept him alive and at least going through some sort of trial is that he has received international attention, but Hamas is still so far unwilling to admit its mistakes when it comes to locking up Palestinians,” Martin said.

PANORAMA

RETURN TO GAZA

Reporter: Jane Corbin

RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION:  BBC ONE
DATE: 20:08:2007

Hello, I’m Jeremy Vine and this is Panorama. A land the world would rather forget where just about the only job left is smuggling guns across the border.

MASKED MAN: This shipment is for someone who has ordered 70 rifles. We’re going to get them for him now.

VINE: And after years of fighting a common enemy, its leaders have now turned on each other.

ANGRY WOMAN: If they can’t agree then we don’t want either of them.

VINE: A thin strip of land on the Mediterranean coast, Gaza could be a holiday destination like Greece or Turkey, and yet it’s anything but. Home to a million and a half Palestinians living under virtual siege conditions, it has no strategic value, no oil, no gas, and these days no industry, and yet a bloody battle has just been fought over it. Nearly 7 weeks after the release of the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston, Jane Corbin has been back to Gaza to find out how its people are living and what hope there is for the future.

…….

CORBIN: The Abu Delfa family have found out what happens under Hamas rule when you’re accused of being a collaborator.

TAMARA: They killed my father. They killed my father.

CORBIN: Tamara’s father, Walid, a member of a rival faction, was seized at dead of night a month ago by Hamas militiamen. His brother, Khalil survived and talked to us the day after he was released.

KHALIL: Here are the marks. They tied our hands. They tied our arms to a chain hanging from a beam and kept pulling them up like this. They beat us on our hands, on our feet. Four of them attacked me, they beat us, they broke us. At the same time I could hear my brother’s voice, the same thing was happening to him. He was calling to me over and over. He was asking for help from God. Suddenly his voice stopped. I can still hear it now in my mind.

CORBIN: While their father was abducted by Hamas gunmen the Abu Delfa family say the killing may have been a personal vendetta. They don’t know if it was authorised at the top level, but they’re calling on Mr Haniya to investigate.

Since Hamas took over here in Gaza a few weeks ago, there have been human rights abuses. There have the killings of several people. We know of one family, the Abu Delfa family who lost their father. How can you justify this? These are forces, Hamas forces that have carried out these killings.

ISMAIL HANIYA:  I want to assure you that the prisoner was not arrested for political reasons but for security reasons.  We have established a commission to investigate the incident, learn lessons and ensure it won’t happen again under any circumstances.

CORBIN:  There is no evidence of widespread political killing, but disturbing incidents continue. When guests started singing pro-Fatah songs at this wedding, Hamas’ Executive Force arrived. Several people were injured. Since the takeover Fatah-linked TV and radio stations have been closed down.

……

Published Wednesday 27/04/2011 (updated) 28/04/2011 17:37

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday night that he had designated his Minister of the Interior to reinforce rules against torture, following an outcry over the death of a detainee earlier in April [2011]l.

“There is good treatment of inmates in our prisons,” Haniyeh said in a statement, adding that following concern from rights organizations, the minister would again instruct all security departments and interrogators about Gaza’s prohibitions on the use of torture.

The statement was issued following the weekly Tuesday cabinet meeting of Gaza’s government, hours after Human Right Watch issued a report calling for a clear investigation into the death of Adel Razeq, a 52-year-old father of nine, who died in police custody on April 14.

HRW’s call followed statement of concern by Gaza-based rights organizations, who quoted family of Razeq saying he did not have any health conditions prior to his detention, and was released five days later to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

When his brother examined the body, it was badly bruised and appeared to have broken bones, the HRW report said.

Razeq was said by family members to have been hired as a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces in 2005. The forces clashed with Gaza police in 2007, when fighting escalated close to civil war, ultimately seeing Hamas take control of Gaza.

“The evidence raises concern that governmental authorities may have caused or contributed to the death of a man in their custody,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“Hamas should order a fully independent criminal investigation.”

Last Tuesday, an Interior Ministry statement said the prisoner suffered a “sudden illness” and was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. It did not mention why he was being held.

The Ministry of Interior has claimed that Rezeq drank chlorine in the detention center.  According to the statement, an investigation was opened at the time into the cause of Adel Razeq’s death.

He was taken to the Ash-Shifa Hospital for medical observation and afterward was returned to the detention center, with Rezeq dying due to medical complications, it said. However, the statement gave no further details on the circumstances of his death.

ENDS MAAN.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=382501

DISSIDENT UNDER FIRE EDITOR’S NOTE: Amnesty International called for a similar investigation into claims that ‘Dissident Under Fire’ Mohamed Abu Muailek was tortured [See previous Report].  It is believed that the Hamas authorities have not responded to this request.

Last Modified: 01 Apr 2007 06:26 GMT People & Power is about power in the 21st century – who has it, who wants it and how it is being used – and abused. 

We travel the world to see how the balance of power is shifting in politics, business and society.

People, places and movements which scarcely registered on the Richter Scale of power a decade ago are now shaking our world.

We want to explore the forces – economic, political, cultural and technological – that are changing the winners and losers in today’s struggles for influence.

People and Power is also committed to cutting-edge investigative journalism.

Our job is to uncover the stories of how power is applied, for better or worse, in all corners of society, in all parts of the planet.
Documentaries are the heart of our show.

Palestinian Unity

People & Power looks at the formation of the Palestinian Unity Government earlier this month, against a backdrop of internecine strife.

Journalist Paul Martin has been piecing together the tortuous and at times seemingly impossible route that brought the new government to fruition. He hears the inside story from key negotiators, including the crucial mediator Mustapha Barghouti, a former unsuccessful candidate for the Palestinian presidency.

In February, as 100 Palestinians, some of them children, lay dead as a result of street fighting and assassinations, the two sides finally reached a deal in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.

Ghazi Hamad, one of the key Hamas negotiators there, describes a remarkable scene in which erstwhile enemies Mahmoud Abbas, the president, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister and Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas political chief in exile, held hands as they circled the holy Qaba Stone, dressed in white robes.

When the deal was finally reached, Barghouti was offered the job of information minister. But the clashes, though drastically reduced, have continued to claim occasional victims.

People & Power has astonishing access into the complexities and limitations of Palestinian power politics.

This episode is scheduled to air at the following times:

Friday 30 March 2007 (21.30 GMT)

Saturday 31 March 2007 (05.30 GMT)

Sunday 01 April 2007 (04.00, 14.30 GMT)

Monday 02 April 2007 (09.00, 20:30 GMT)

Tuesday 03 April 2007 (01.30, 07:30 GMT

Palestinian Unity

People & Power looks at the formation of the Palestinian Unity Government earlier this month, against a backdrop of internecine strife.

Journalist Paul Martin has been piecing together the tortuous and at times seemingly impossible route that brought the new government to fruition. He hears the inside story from key negotiators, including the crucial mediator Mustapha Barghouti, a former unsuccessful candidate for the Palestinian presidency.

In February, as 100 Palestinians, some of them children, lay dead as a result of street fighting and assassinations, the two sides finally reached a deal in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.

Ghazi Hamad, one of the key Hamas negotiators there, describes a remarkable scene in which erstwhile enemies Mahmoud Abbas, the president, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister and Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas political chief in exile, held hands as they circled the holy Qaba Stone, dressed in white robes.

When the deal was finally reached, Barghouti was offered the job of information minister. But the clashes, though drastically reduced, have continued to claim occasional victims.

People & Power has astonishing access into the complexities and limitations of Palestinian power politics.

This episode is scheduled to air at the following times:

Friday 30 March 2007 (21.30 GMT)

Saturday 31 March 2007 (05.30 GMT)

Sunday 01 April 2007 (04.00, 14.30 GMT)

Monday 02 April 2007 (09.00, 20:30 GMT)

Tuesday 03 April 2007 (01.30, 07:30 GMT

ConflictZones is launching a major series of Debates this year.  The first two will be in Jerusalem and are to be broadcast by BBC WORLD NEWS.

Here are a few video clips from his Gaza coverage.

Gaza report 1 – Newsnight, Paul Martin on frontline

Gaza report 2 – Newsnight, Israeli soldiers practise near
frontline

Gaza report 3 – Newsnight, rockets being prepared

Gaza report 4 – Newsnight, battle in Bet Lehiya

Gaza report 5 – Newsnight, children as weapons of war

Gaza report 6 – Newsnight, Boy plays in dead rocket man’s car

Gaza report 7 – Newsnight, Boy’s therapy

Freelance British journalist and documentary filmmaker freed in March after being jailed for a month in Gaza reveals that he was threatened with death and placed within earshot of violent torture.

The trip was filmed by Paul Martin, who edited the film for CONFLICTZONES.   Later the flagship BBC nightly current affairs television television programme Newsnight made its own version using the raw material of the film.

The BBC Trust, the Corporation’s highest body, rejected claims from an activist that this special report on Newsnight was unfair.

Here is a clip from  Martin’s own Gaza coverage of that incident, which Newsnight had first checked and analysed before deciding to broadcast.  It also re-interviewed Colonel Collins before doing so.

Gaza report  – Colonel: Ammo in mosque?

http://vimeo.com/29312083

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8470100.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/03/paul-martin-gaza-jail-press-freedom

Paul Martin’s pledge comes as the media marks World Press Freedom Day

The Guardian, Monday 3 May 2010

  

 

British journalist Paul Martin with a member of Hamas security forces

 after being released in Gaza. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters

.

The guard at the entrance cocked his rifle with a click-click that echoed around the cell block. Then with his thumb he unlocked the safety catch, and begin swivelling the barrel of his Kalashnikov towards me. I was standing behind a metal grille in a dark cell and had nowhere to hide. He pointed the barrel towards my chest; then, instead of firing, he pulled his gun slowly upward, and laughed.

It was day one of my incarceration in Gaza, where I was held in solitary confinement, denied books to read and a pen and paper, at times placed within earshot of violent torture, and threatened with imminent death several times. It lasted less than a month in February and March this year – hardly comparable, I am aware, with, for example, the years of imprisonment and exile endured by Mónica González Mujica, the intrepid Chilean journalist who today (World Press Freedom Day) will receive a World Press Freedom award from Unesco. But for me those 26 days seemed endless. For most of that time I was convinced that death was the most likely outcome.

“You are not a witness, you are an accused!” the military prosecutor had yelled at me when I was summoned into his office alongside the military court. I had come to give evidence in support of Mohamed, a young man who was the subject of one of my films. He had been part of a militant group that had fired numerous rockets into Israeli civilian areas. I discovered when I returned to Gaza in 2009 that he had left the group, ensuring immediate antagonism from all militants, and had begun to criticise the efficacy of these attacks and the justification for them. “Our rocket fire at their civilians only gives Israel the excuse and the justification to attack us,” he told me on camera.

Biggest risk

Was I right to film him? Did filming him put him in more danger than he already was? I would argue that it is the interviewee’s decision, not the journalist’s, provided he has had time to think about it and the risks have been made clear; and in this case being filmed was more of a protection than a threat – repressive regimes worldwide fear negative publicity, and the biggest risk to dissidents is to be “disappeared” without anyone outside their borders taking any notice of the (non-) event.

Not only is Mohamed convinced I was right to have filmed him, according to his lawyer, but so too is his older brother, who is fighting to save Mohamed from execution. Was I right to try to give evidence on his behalf, despite the risk of arrest? That is a dilemma that journalists occasionally face: should we try everything to protect the subjects of our films if they later get into deep trouble with the authorities? Of course we should. Journalists have a duty not just to tell the truth in their media outlets, I would argue, but also to defend those who have given them their stories.

I had written to the military prosecutors, to the court and to the Hamas leadership stating that I would give evidence. Banners around Gaza still proclaim: “We welcome foreigners and will keep them secure” – Hamas partly justifies its bloody overthrow of the rival Fatah forces in June 2007 on the basis of establishing law and order and security. And it did succeed in getting Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent who was held for four months by a militia not affiliated to Hamas, released. But since then Hamas has locked up scores of journalists or closed down their news operations, although the foreign media have been left alone.

My six interrogators argued that I was a spy for MI6, and possibly Mossad as well, and, as such, faced a mandatory death penalty. I was even told I had been inside a Gaza City hospital during the Gaza-Israel war of December 2008 to January 2009, seeking to discover if the Hamas leadership were hiding there. In fact, of course, no journalists could get inside Gaza City during the fighting, and I arrived back in Gaza several days after the ceasefire. My 21-year-old daughter’s Facebook entry showed her paragliding in Cape Town – this became military training in Haifa, according to my interrogators. I had filmed in the tunnels that link Gaza with Egypt, showing weapons smuggling. Yes of course – and so have most of the world’s news organisations.

The allegations may seem laughable, but the chilling truth is that it really doesn’t matter how ludicrous they are: if a regime is hellbent on turning a journalist into a spy, it can simply put him on trial in a closed court, announce a verdict, list the now “proven” allegations, and lock the journalist up – or worse. Who would know? My excellent Palestinian lawyer attended one seven-hour interrogation session, then was banned. So too was the British consul.

The guilt or innocence of the supposed spy was of course irrelevant to the political calculation being made. So was my past record of long-term support for the human rights of people across the Middle East and Africa. My exposure, for example, of the awful death of one 12-year-old boy in Gaza City during the recent war, shown on CNN, NBC News and Channel 4 News, ensures I still get hate mail from those who believe I have a sinister role as a producer of pro-Palestinian propaganda.

A key factor weighing against my release was the politics of opportunism. Coinciding with my arrest was the assassination of a top Hamas official in Dubai, in which 12 faked British passports had been used. The Hamas security services, internally accused of failing to protect their man, now had the chance to show strength – they could tell the locals, and their hardline Arab and Islamist backers, that they had now caught a “spy” and would execute him: scoreline Israel 1 Hamas 1.

After 21 days, I was therefore amazed when a top Hamas official turned up at my jail. He produced calling cards from Lord Steel and other British parliamentarians, who had come to Gaza against the advice of the British government; at their request, he had asked to see me and get me released. I was fortunate in having a long track record working for broadcasters such the BBC, Channel 4 News, al-Jazeera and Arte, and for newspapers such as the Times and the Guardian. My detention was always likely to create some sort of western backlash, though oddly politicians and figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu appeared to put more pressure on Hamas than most media organs.

It seems Hamas’s desire to appear reasonable and credible in western eyes won the day – but at a cost to me. The secret deal was to release me, but to warn me that personal details – my home address and the whereabouts of my children – would be released to “other agencies who might take a more aggressive view of things” if I revealed too much about my prison conditions or criticised Hamas. In return they would drop the absurd claims of spying.

Journalistic freedom

In the end they reneged on the deal, even as I was playing my part at the exit from Gaza – by refusing to answer questions on my prison conditions or my opinion of my Hamas jailers. I simply said my release was a “great victory” for the freedom of journalists to report fairly and accurately irrespective of the dangers. I called on governments and armed groups to release more than 100 journalists who are held in jails across the world or have disappeared. And for governments to take their duties seriously by making clear to such regimes or groups that there are consequences to this repression of journalistic freedom.

My contribution in future will be to fight for the rights of my colleagues still held in jail; to fight to free, or save the lives of, those dissidents who are locked up after speaking to us, or face death, as does the reformed rocket-firer Mohamed; and above all not to be cowed into silence. Hamas, and all regimes and groups who behave repressively, can expect much more exposure from my pen and my camera. And, I hope, from us all.

Paul Martin will be answering questions after the premiere of his short film Mohamed: Dissident Under Fire at the Everyman Cinema, Belsize Park, London, on Monday May 17. Book on 0870 066 4777

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MOHAMED ABU MUAILEK IS JUST ONE SUCH EXAMPLE.  MORE WILL FOLLOW.