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Sunday, June 30, 2013
CAMERA Details Pre-Oslo Prisoners-terrorists-not political prisoners

CAMERA: Details on the Pre-Oslo Prisoners - terrorists - not political
prisoners

[Excerpted by IMRA from "What the Media Won't Tell You About Palestinian
Prisoners" - June 5, 2013 by CAMERA staff ]
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=2&x_article=2477

...On April 3, 2013, during the State Department’s Daily Briefing, a
journalist identified as Nadia – likely Nadia Bilbassy Charters who works
for Al-Arabiya and Middle Eastern Broadcast Center (MBC) – asked
spokesperson Victoria Nuland the following question, referring to the
pre-Oslo prisoners who Mahmoud Abbas has demanded need to be released in
order to resume peace talks:

There were reports indicating that the Israelis were willing to release some
political – Palestinian political prisoners arrested before ’94 as a
goodwill gesture to bring – to entice the President Abbas to come back to
the negotiation. Is this something that you have discussed with both sides
and it has any kind of truth that might happen on this trip?

Who exactly are these approximately 120 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel
since before 1994? While several Palestinian sources and some media oulets
refer to them as "political prisoners," data released by Israel's Ministry
of Justice, and published here for the first time, indicate that in fact
these men were involved in terrorism or other brutal crimes, mostly
involving murder or attempted murder of Israeli civilians or soldiers,
tourists, or Palestinian civilians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

The following is a link to CAMERA's translation of the data provided by
the Ministry of Justice on 118 pre-Oslo prisoners.
http://bit.ly/13iFSgt
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfi7j110282sn01/145679431-Pre-Oslo-Prisoners.pdf

The list is a direct translation of the Ministry's material, and does not
include added commentary or interpretation. There are some irregularities in
the Ministry's data which we left without comment. For instance, in a few
cases, the prisoner's affiliation is listed only as "Fronts," and there is
no further indication as to whether it is the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. Also, in a handful of cases, the Ministry wrote that the names of
the victims are "not indicated," or that a prisoner was "apparently"
involved in murder and that "not enough information was available for
indexing." We faithfully translated this information, incomplete as it is,
from the Ministry of Justice. Finally, the Ministry includes a category
which literally translates as "citizenship" or "nationality," but which
actually refers to the prisoner's place of origin -- Israel, Judea and
Samaria (the West Bank) or the Gaza Strip.

Beyond the common understanding of the term "political prisoners" as those
who are imprisoned for their political beliefs, the European Union last year
took a step towards officially codifying the term. In a resolution passed by
the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, the EU Parliamentary
Assembly set out:

“A person deprived of his or her personal liberty is to be regarded as a
‘political prisoner’:

a. if the detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental
guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its
Protocols (ECHR), in particular freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association;

b. if the detention has been imposed for purely political reasons without
connection to any offence

c. if, for political motives, the length of the detention or its conditions
are clearly out of proportion to the offence the person has been found
guilty of or is suspected of;

d. if, for political motives, he or she is detained in a discriminatory
manner as compared to other persons; or,

e. if the detention is the result of proceedings which were clearly unfair
and this appears to be connected with political motives of the authorities.
(SG/Inf(2001)34, paragraph 10).

Yet, as is clear given the Justice Ministry's data, the pre-Oslo prisoners
were engaged in terrorism or other violent criminal acts inconsistent with
the EU definition of political prisoners. To call these men "political
prisoners," and to minimize or ignore the violence of post-Oslo Palestinian
prisoners, is an egregious journalistic violation and a serious disservice
to news consumers.
=============
Research and writing by Adam Levick, Hadar Sela and Tamar Sternthal. To view
this article in Spanish, visit Revista de Medio Oriente.

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