Mohammed El-Halabi is a senior Palestinian support employee with the worldwide Christian charity World Imaginative and prescient. He was kidnapped by Israeli military thugs in June 2016 throughout a routine journey between World Imaginative and prescient’s Jerusalem and Gaza places of work.
He has been languishing in Israeli jails ever since and has nonetheless not confronted trial.
Israel has falsely accused Mohammed of diverting thousands and thousands of {dollars} of World Imaginative and prescient funds to Hamas – a political celebration and armed resistance motion – away from the charity’s Gaza department, the place he’s the director.
However Mohammed has been repeatedly cleared of these accusations.
Inner investigations by World Imaginative and prescient and the Australian authorities – one of many charity’s main funders – discovered no proof that Mohammed had accomplished something flawed. World Imaginative and prescient even paid a staggering $7 million to rent a forensic auditing agency to research Israel’s false accusations in opposition to them.
These investigations utterly exonerated him and even discovered that Mohammed – who shouldn’t be a political supporter of the group – had gone out of his option to distance the charity from Hamas.
Israel has offered no proof to help its outlandish claims in opposition to Mohammed. The case that Israel’s secret police Shin Wager has fabricated in opposition to him shouldn’t be even a reliable forgery. They declare that he stole greater than $50 million from World Imaginative and prescient over the course of seven years.
However that quantity is definitely greater than double World Imaginative and prescient’s whole Gaza finances!
As is regular behaviour for the thugs of the Israeli apartheid regime, Mohammed has been tortured in jail, and a United Nations (UN) official has confirmed that his therapy might quantity to torture. He was initially disappeared with out a hint, tortured and denied entry to a lawyer.
Even now, his lawyer Maher Hanna is systematically denied entry to witnesses, the flexibility to view proof and has even been banned from writing his personal notes throughout court docket hearings.
Lots of the hearings have been held in secret, and all of Israel’s so-called proof in opposition to Mohammed is definitely secret proof produced by the Shin Wager spy company.
Israel’s court docket system shouldn’t be a official authorized system.
Palestinians within the West Financial institution are prosecuted in navy courts during which the conviction charge is a staggering 99.7 per cent. It is a kangaroo court docket and a racist kangaroo court docket: Israeli Jews are given civilian trials, whereas most Palestinians are judged and prosecuted by the Israeli military.
That’s the very definition of apartheid.
One of many Israeli judges in 2017 put stress on Mohammed to simply accept a plea deal. “You’ve got learn the numbers and the statistics,” the choose stated, “you know the way these points are dealt with.”
These are usually not the actions of a democracy.
UN Particular Rapporteur Michael Lynk last year demanded that Israel both give Mohammed a good trial or launch him, stating: “What is occurring to Mr El-Halabi bears no relation to the trial requirements we count on from democracies, and is a part of a sample the place Israel makes use of secret proof to indefinitely detain tons of of Palestinians.”
As a result of Mohammed has insisted on having his day in court docket – regardless of how a lot the chances are stacked in opposition to him – the Israelis are pressuring him to simply accept a plea deal, during which he agrees to confess to a lesser cost and doubtless then be launched on time served.
Talking through his lawyer, Mohammed has accused Israel of participating in what he referred to as a “fishing exhibition” in opposition to World Imaginative and prescient – an evaluation with which I agree.
The actions of Israel in attempting to drive Mohammed to simply accept a plea deal – regardless of such high-profile accusations – are telling.
They need to have the ability to have a brand new weapon to make use of in opposition to humanitarian support programmes in Gaza. The work of worldwide charities in Gaza could make it tougher for Israel to totally management the strip. They wish to be free to impose the identical siege on Gaza that they’ve for 14 years now, with out exterior interference.
Israel’s defamation battle in opposition to World Imaginative and prescient is a part of Israel’s battle in opposition to Palestinian existence. It’s a part of Zionism’s lengthy genocidal battle in opposition to the indigenous folks of Palestine.
If Israel succeeds in forcing Mohammed to recant and signal a false confession, it is going to have gained a strong new weapon in its battle in opposition to the humanitarian support organisations working to alleviate Palestinian struggling – the identical struggling that Israel has induced within the first place.
Mohammed clearly is aware of all this, and that’s the reason he’s refusing to signal. In doing so, he’s resisting Israel’s apartheid regime.
All of this has meant nice struggling for him and his household.
After I first wrote about Mohammed’s case in my MEMO column last yr, his father Khalil wrote me an e mail thanking me with a photograph of Mohammed’s smiling youngsters.
Earlier this week, I learn reporter Joe Dyke’s long article in The Guardian about Mohammed, and it comprises a more moderen photograph of Khalil and the kids. His youngest son, Faris, who was a child within the photograph emailed to me, is now a rising younger boy who barely is aware of his father. The 2 eldest are teenagers – younger males.
These years of the kids’s lives are years that Mohammed and his household won’t ever regain. These are years stolen by Israel and its despicable racist challenge to impose a European Jewish settler-colony within the coronary heart of the Arab world.
That’s the reason it’s incumbent on us all to marketing campaign for Mohammed’s speedy launch.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
