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: info@skeyesmedia.org

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: info@skeyesmedia.org

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.