Joint List members cause disturbance at Duma trial

Amiram Ben Uliel; Photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/POOL

Amiram Ben Uliel; Photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/POOL

Tuesday, June 9, 2020, 15:11 Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi and additional members of the Joint List caused a disturbance in the courtroom at the opening of the deliberation at which the sides stated claims for the severity or leniency of the penalty in the Kfar Duma case. The Knesset Members shouted, called out and refused to maintain quiet despite requests from the courtroom security guards. Following the disturbance Attorney Asher Ohayon, who is representing Amiram Ben-Uliel, demanded that the Joint List Knesset Members be removed from the deliberation. After the judges entered the courtroom, the commotion stopped.
The deliberation is currently taking place. Ben-Uliel’s wife, Orian, is expected to present a letter to the judges: “The Dawabshe family experienced a terrible event. They deserve to receive a just trial, a trial that will bring about an honest judgment. Instead of that, they have received a show trial and an innocent man has been framed. The citizens of Israel are worthy of a court which rules according to justice and truth, and not a system upon which one cannot rely at all,” she wrote.
Ben-Uliel repeated her claims that her husband Amiram is innocent. Orian reminded the court of the extreme torture which he underwent: “You greatly erred. You toed the line with the ‘production’ of the GSS, who decided to attain results in the Duma interrogation at any price. You authorized a public relations show in the interrogation rooms, and torture, and then you ran to photograph [the interrogatees] afterwards as if the pain had passed, as if the fear had been alleviated, as if whoever had undergone torture returned of his own free will hours later to the same [interrogation] room with the same people [the interrogators]. You set new standards for interrogation rooms in Israel: Interrogators may torture, beat and do to the interrogatees whatever comes to their minds. The most important thing is that in the end there is a photograph of the interrogatee looking all right and then the court can convict him with ease.
“My husband has been punished already during interrogations, punished through no fault of his own. The pain and the emotional scars left from the torture, they are a more severe punishment than any court penalty. Few are the people in Israel who have been so punished at the hands of the government, who have actively experienced corporal punishment as during the Inquisition and the Middle Ages, whippings, and severe torture,” wrote Orian to the judges.
Since the July 2015 arson attack on the Dawabshe family’s house Kfar Duma, Honenu has assisted many Jews accused of involvement with the crime. For a selection of cases in which Honenu Attorneys represented defendants and GSS interrogatees, see here.

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