B’Tselem human rights center has criticized Israel for persisting in committing abuses against detained Palestinian children and using military courts to confer legitimacy on its violations against their rights.
“Every year hundreds of Palestinian minors undergo the same scenario. Israeli security forces pick them up on the street or at home in the middle of the night then handcuff and blindfold them and transport them to interrogation often subjecting them to violence en route” B’Tselem said in a report released on Tuesday.
“Exhausted and scared – some having spent a long time in transit some having been roused from sleep some having had nothing to eat or drink for hours – the minors are then interrogated. They are completely alone in there cut off from the world without any adult they know and trust by their side and without having been given a chance to consult with a lawyer before the interrogation. The interrogation itself often involves threats yelling verbal abuse and sometimes physical violence. Its sole purpose is to get the minors to confess or provide information about others” the report explained.
Later “they are taken to the military court for a remand hearing where most see their lawyer for the first time. In the vast majority of cases the military judges approve remand even when the only evidence against the minors is their own confession or else allegedly incriminating statements made against them by others. This is the case even when the statements were obtained through severe infringement of the minors’ rights.”
“Over the past decade the state has made several changes to the military orders that deal with the arrest and detention of minors and their treatment in the military courts. On the face of it these changes were meant to improve the protections afforded to minors in the military justice system. However the changes Israel made have had no more than a negligible impact on minors’ rights. It would seem that they have far more to do with improved appearances than with what happens in actual practice. The facts and figures all demonstrate that minors’ rights are still being regularly and systematically violated” the report underlined.
B’Tselem also debunked in its report Israel’s claims that the establishment of the military juvenile court in 2009 was a landmark achievement in the protection of minors’ rights in the military justice system affirming that in practice there is no improvement in the safeguarding of the rights of minors facing charges and there is persistence in excluding the parental role in legal proceedings taken against detained children.
