By
Isabelle Humphries, IOL Palestine Correspondent
BETHLEHEM,
November 24 (IslamOnline) - A former Amnesty International ‘Prisoner
of Conscience’ is yet again in Israeli detention, following his arrest
from his home in Dheisheh refugee camp outside Bethlehem.
Abed
Al-Rahman Al-Ahmar was released from Israeli custody in May 2002, after
spending a year under administrative detention, which is a detention
without public trial or due legal process.
In
the early hours of the morning of November 22, Al-Ahmar was one of those
taken in the latest wave of abductions and invasion of the Bethlehem
district.
Witnesses
to the arrest testify that soldiers who entered his home were demanding
the arrest of a relative. After ascertaining that the other man was not
in the building, the soldiers detained Al-Ahmar instead.
“We
have a relative of the package’, soldiers radio-phoned to their
superiors,” said Allegra Pacheco, Al-Ahmar’s wife. Since his arrest,
Israel has placed Al-Ahmar under an 11 day detention order, and he
remains in Etzion detention center.
“Abed’s
arrest is a clear example of the Israeli policy of collective
punishment”, Al-Ahmar’s wife, a UN employed lawyer and American
citizen, told Islam Online.
This
specific invasion into Bethlehem was itself an act of collective
punishment, following the discovery that the bomber in Thursday’s
attack in occupied Jerusalem was from the Bethlehem district.
Israel
has systematically developed a policy in which the neighborhood, from
which the individual attacker is from, is targeted, but also that
relatives of wanted individuals are detained.
It
is strictly against international law that, in this case for example,
Al-Ahmar was detained in place of a relative wanted for questioning.
In
this individual case, questions have to be asked also about whether
Israel was using the relative as an excuse to detain Al-Ahmar.
Palestinian human rights groups have consistently said that Israel
targets human rights activists to intimidate voices of dissent into
silence.
Al-Ahmar
was formerly a human rights researcher and field worker for both the
Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) and the Israeli human
rights organization, B’tselem.
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Nativity
church still under Israeli siege
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A
further aspect of concern in this case, is that as the husband of a UN
official, Al-Ahmar is entitled to the internationally recognized rights
and privileges of a UN spouse. Under international conventions he should
not be detained and questioned in such a manner.
Maysoun
Zayid, also an American passport holder, was witness to the arrest.
“We were forced at gunpoint to sit outside in the cold with Ms.
Pacheco’s UN vehicle used as a prop for the soldier’s weapons.
Then
Ms. Pacheco’s husband was taken aside and questioned. Throughout this
time, Ms. Pacheco along with me and the British citizen repeatedly
reminded them that Ms. Pacheco’s husband was an UN dependent and
therefore protected by international conventions regarding UN officials.
Our demands that they comply were completely ignored.”
As
the events of recent days have shown, the dangers to international
passport holders, both guests and UN officials have been increasing. On
Friday 22, a British UNWRA senior official, Mr. Iain Hook, was killed by
Israeli army fire as he tried to evacuate his staff from UN offices in
Jenin.
In
a separate incident, an Irish peace activist living in Jenin was shot in
the leg as she tried to shield Palestinian children from Israeli army
gunfire.
Israel
has admitted responsibility for the killing, saying that the army
believed that Hook’s mobile telephone was a ‘grenade’.
Witnesses
to the killing said that as well as firing the fatal bullets, Israeli
soldiers kept an ambulance delayed as Hook bled to death trapped at the
scene, a charge that Israel vigorously denies.
