Another GSS detainee barred from meeting with attorney

Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 20:21 The GSS is continuing to deny detainees their basic right to meet with an attorney. On the night of Monday, May 19 a 19-year-old Shomron resident was detained and by a highly unusual order has been barred from meeting with an attorney for five days. Upon his detention GSS personnel informed him of the order. He was taken to a GSS detention center where he joins five other detainees being held under very harsh conditions.
Honenu attorney Aharon Roza, who is representing the detainee, attempted to find out what the charge against his client is. However the police representative refused to inform Roza of even that basic information.
On Tuesday, May 20 he was taken to a deliberation at the Petah Tikva Magistrate Court. Police and GSS detectives requested a 7-day remand extension. At the end of the deliberation Judge Merav Greenberg ordered a 5-day remand extension until Sunday, May 25. Honenu filed an appeal with the Jerusalem District Court on the ban on meeting with an attorney.
The GSS has allowed Honenu attorney Adi Kedar to meet with two of the youths who were detained last week and have not yet met with an attorney. One of the youths had been detained for nine days without meeting with an attorney and the other for six days. GSS investigators are still refusing to inform Kedar of the charges against one of the detainees.
The two detainees with whom Kedar met are being held in the GSS Kishon Detention Center under extremely harsh conditions. Honenu reports that they are undergoing intensive interrogations under most severe physical and psychological pressure by GSS interrogators.
“In my own name as an attorney and also in the name of all defense attorneys I regard the orders banning meetings with an attorney being issued in wholesale quantities which are not related to any unusual incident or investigation as damaging to our good name,” said Honenu attorney Roza after the deliberation. “The claim of these decisions is that the mere meeting between an attorney and his client is liable to disrupt the investigation. Therefore these decisions cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the defense attorney’s work, and I regard that with severity.”