Washington, DC – The Israeli authorities have had an American teenager for almost six months without trial for having pretended to throw stones on Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank, an assertion that the 16 -year -old family refuses while expressing his concern for his deterioration in health.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American who was born in the American state of Florida, was completely cut off from his family since his arrest in February without visits or telephone rights, said his father and uncle.
According to a video of Israeli military interrogation obtained by the family and seen by Tel Aviv Tribune on Wednesday, Mohammed denied charges that he threw stones on Israeli vehicles near his village north of Ramallah.
Zaher Ibrahim, the father of the imprisoned adolescent, said on Wednesday that the family had received information that Mohammed radically loses weight and suffers from a skin infection. Ibrahim said he was concerned about the well-being of his son.
“Of course, we are afraid,” he said. “When you can’t visit him and you can’t receive a phone call from him, what do you know?” We do not know if he is dead … There is nothing we know.
According to the family, officials of the United States visited Mohammed in weeks of detention after his arrest. But an email from a consular officer suggests that civil servants could not access him earlier in July.
“The penitentiary service of Israel has updated to us yesterday that your son suffers from scabies, and he is treated by a doctor. We asked (one) update concerning his healing,” said the email.
The scabies, caused by an infestation of mites, causes extreme itching and rashes through the body.
“We hope to see him next week or the following week when he heals,” said the email, committing to keeping the family “up to date”.
The Israeli army, its Ministry of Defense and its government press office did not respond to the request for comments from Tel Aviv Tribune at the time of publication.
The US State Department refused to answer Tel Aviv Tribune’s questions about the Mohammed affair or to confirm or deny its detention, citing “confidentiality considerations”.
“The ministry has no higher priority than the security and security of American citizens,” a spokesperson for the department wrote in a note in Tel Aviv Tribune.
“Whenever an American citizen is detained abroad, the ministry works to provide consular assistance, which can include the visit of American citizens detained to ensure that they have access to necessary medicines or medical care and the facilitation of authorized communications with their family or others.”
The United States provides billions of dollars in military aid in Israel each year as well as diplomatic support for the United Nations – assistance that has increased considerably since the war against Gaza.
‘We are swept away under the carpet’
Mohammed was arrested during a raid by Israeli troops heavily armed in his family home in Al-Mazraa Ash-Sharqiya, north of Ramallah, at dawn on February 16, according to his family.
He faces charges related to the launch of La Roche, but his relatives say that they fear that his health will deteriorate in detention because his court hearings are systematically postponed.
Ibrahim also expressed his concern that Israeli prosecutors can use evidence obtained by torture to incriminate his son.
Mohammed’s family urgently calls on the US government to obtain its release before it is too late. The teenager is the germal cousin of Sayfollah Musallet, which was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July in the West Bank.
The arrest of Mohammed occurred in the middle of the climbing of violence by Israeli forces and the settlers in the occupied West Bank while the war against Gaza rages.
The Israeli army has regularly carried out fatal raids and demolitions at home in the West Bank. For their part, the Israeli settlers often descend to the Palestinian communities and slide entire neighborhoods.
Relatives of Mohammed say that his ordeal highlights the reluctance of the United States to protect even its own citizens from Israeli abuses.
“It is obvious that we are swept away under the carpet. And with regard to attention or investigations or a type of justice, we do not know,” said Zeyad Kadur, Mohammed’s uncle.
“Eight Americans have been killed in the past 19 months. Where is our place online? Are we new? “
According to non-profit defense for international-Palestine (DCI-P) children, Israel relaxes up to 700 Palestinian children each year.
‘Just a child’
Mohammed was 16 years old in prison in March. His family said that US officials had promised to put pressure on their prison conditions and request their release.
In addition to updates to the embassy, everything that the family knows Mohammed is by reports from former detainees who saw him in prison. They also see them on video flows during their appearances.
Kadur, Mohammed’s uncle, said the family estimates that the teenager lost 13 kg (28 pounds) in detention, more than a quarter of his body weight.
In Megiddo prison, the same establishment where Mohammed is detained, the 17-year-old detainee, Walid Ahmad, died in March due to “prolonged malnutrition”, according to DCI-P.
Walid, who had been detained for six months without accusation, also suffered from scabies.
Kadur pointed out that Mohammed is “just a child” who loves life, and he was impatient to obtain his driver’s license in order to work at the Florida ice cream store during the summer.
“There is no law, there is no country, there is nowhere in the world where children are imprisoned and that this country is called a democracy and has no visits or telephone calls, or any method – even the writing of letters – to (contact) parents,” Kadur told Tel Aviv Tribune.
The case of Musallet
While Mohammed languishes in Israeli detention, the settlers who killed his cousin remain free.
In a separate incident, Yinon Levi, an Israeli colonist who seemed to be fatally turning the Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen on video earlier this week, was quickly released for residential assignment.
Palestinians in the West Bank are tried before Israeli military courts who have a conviction of almost 100%. But the colonists are mainly prosecuted under Israeli criminal law, and they are rarely faced with the responsibility of the attacks against the Palestinians.
This two -level legal approach is a facet of what the main rights defense groups call an apartheid system against the Palestinians.
“Israeli settlers can come to you, shoot you in your head and go home to sleep,” said Ibrahim, Mohammed’s father.
“The Palestinian, if he has his own land in front of his house and the colonists burn his car and he pushes them back, he will be charged.”
The United States ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee – a vocal supporter of the illegal Israeli colonies – described the murder of Musallet as a “terrorist act” and called Israel to “investigate” the incident.
But there was no arrest in the case of 20 days after Musallet was beaten to death.