8/9/2019 A Palestinian Military Court Sentences the Journalist
Tareq
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Samir Kassir Foundation, Aref Saghieh Bldg.( Ground Floor), 63,
Zahrani St., Sioufi, Achrafieh, Beirut, LebanonTel /Fax: 00961 1
397334, Mobile: 00961 3 372717, E-Mail Address:
[email protected]
Beirut, February 17, 2010
Press releaseIn a first precedent in the history of the
Palestinian media
A Palestinian military court sentences the journalist Tareq Abu
Zeid to
one year and a half in prison
The West BankA SKeyes Special Report
On February 16, the Palestinian Military Court sentenced Mr.
Tareq Abu Zeid, the
correspondent of Al-Aqsa Satellite Channel which is affiliated
to Hamas, to one year and
a half in prison.This sentence against a Palestinian journalist
issued by a special military tribunal is a
precedent and is the first of its kind since the inception of
the Palestinian National
Authority, and even since after the relationship between the
Authority and Hamas
deteriorated in June 2007.
The military courts quick ruling came as a surprise to the
family of Abu Zeid and to theJerusalem Centre for Legal Assistance
and Human Rights which took over the defence of
the journalist Abu Zeid since his arrest on the eighth of
November 2009, at the hands of
the Palestinian Military Intelligence Service.
His father said: we learned about the sentence from the news. We
were not told of thedate and venue of the trial.
The Palestinian High Court of Justice in Ramallah had issued a
decision to release the journalist Abu Zeid on December 12, 2010;
however, the intelligence service did not
carry out the decision.
According to the lawyer of the Jerusalem Centre Bassam Karajeh,
the defence of the
detainee Abu Zeid resulted in the decision of the Palestinian
High Court of Justice to
release him and to repeal the order issued by the head of the
military judiciary to arrest
him.
He added: Unfortunately, we waited for the intelligence service
to heed the decision, but
that did not happen. The centre then sent a copy of the release
order to the Council of
Ministers so that it would instruct the intelligence service to
release the journalist Abu
Zeid.
Karajeh then stressed that the failure of the military judiciary
to execute the courtsorder is in violation of Article 106 of the
Palestinian Basic Law, which stipulates thatjudicial decisions are
enforceable and that refraining from doing so is in breach of the
law
that is punishable by imprisonment and dismissal from the job if
the party found to be in
violation is a public servant.According to sources in the
military prosecution in the city of Nablus, Tareq Abu Zeid
was sentenced to a year and a half in prison on charges of
seditious acts, imparting
8/9/2019 A Palestinian Military Court Sentences the Journalist
Tareq
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Samir Kassir Foundation, Aref Saghieh Bldg.( Ground Floor), 63,
Zahrani St., Sioufi, Achrafieh, Beirut, LebanonTel /Fax: 00961 1
397334, Mobile: 00961 3 372717, E-Mail Address:
[email protected]
information and smuggling goods and funds to parties hostile to
the Palestinian National
Authority, in a manner that violates the provisions of
Palestinian law.
But according to several Palestinian human rights and legal
experts, the Palestinian
Military Judiciary Commission does not have jurisdiction over
civilians, and what it iscommitting is nothing short of usurping
the purviews of the civilian judiciary, because no
civilians should appear before its courts no matter what, as
this violates the Palestinian
Basic Law which is the equivalent of a Palestinian
constitution.
The Military Judicial Commission, through military courts, is
enforcing the
Revolutionary Penal Code and Criminal Procedure. These are both
laws that belonged to
the days of the Palestinian Liberation Organizations in 1978,
and were the basis of the
latters field military trials during its presence in
Lebanon.
It should be mentioned here that the government of Dr. Salam
Fayyad banned Al-Aqsa
TV, which is affiliated with Hamas, from the West Bank as of
16/9/2007.
The sentence against the journalist Abu Zeid sparked a wave of
uproar among the
journalists and media professionals, who considered his trial to
be a political crime and astab in the back of the freedom of the
press.
The journalist Abu Zeid, who is from the city of Jenin, had been
arrested by the Israeli
forces and imprisoned in the Negev desert prison for nearly 11
months, before being
subsequently released on December 16, 2008.
He was arrested later on August 27, 2009 by the Palestinian
Intelligence Service, which
detained him for a period of 22 days.
The last arrest by the Palestinian Intelligence took place on
November 8, 2009, and Abu
Zeid continues to be detained at the Juneid prison in the city
of Nablus, pending the
investigation by the military judiciary.
The SKeyes Centre for Media and Cultural Freedom strongly
denounces violationsagainst journalists and deplores bringing them
to a military court in an attempt to stifle
their freedom. SKeyes also calls on the competent authorities to
reconsider the sentence
against Abu Zeid, and immediately release him and the other
detained journalists Yazid
Khodr, Maaz Bisharat, and Mustafa Sabri from the prisons ran by
security services in the
West Bank, and to respect the freedom of opinion and
expression.
