A French judge has opened an investigation into a complaint filed in Paris by French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri against Israel, accusing it of arbitrarily arresting him several times and torturing him over a period of about 20 years, from the age of 16 until his deportation from the city of Jerusalem in 2022.
In an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Hamouri said that the importance of this investigation lies in the fact that it sheds light on the violations to which Palestinian prisoners are subjected in Israeli prisons, especially in light of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank for about a year.
Salah Hamouri was born in Jerusalem in 1985, to a Palestinian father and a French mother. He is a lawyer and was a field researcher at the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. He was arrested several times and served a 7-year prison sentence before being released in 2011 as part of the deal for the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In 2022, he was forcibly deported to France.
How did the investigation start?
A year ago, the lawyers assigned to defend Hamouri began preparing a file on the violations he was subjected to during his arbitrary detention and torture at the hands of Israeli prison guards. Most of these detentions were administrative, and their total exceeded 10 years.
Five months ago, the file was submitted to the French investigating judge, who decided that the case could be considered, saying, “The fact of the ill-treatment to which the plaintiff was subjected and which he denounced seems plausible, and the facts which he denounced are likely to constitute criminal violations relating to acts of torture and brutality.”
Hamouri pointed out that “given that he holds French citizenship, this gives him the right to file a lawsuit in France against the occupying state, and I also believe that there is political pressure regarding Palestine and the atmosphere related to the escalation there, which has all led to accepting the opening of this investigation.”
The importance of opening an investigation
The value of the French investigation is that it comes at a time when it represents general political pressure on Israel in light of the genocide it is practicing against the Palestinians, in addition to highlighting the massacre committed by the occupation in its prisons and the war crimes it is committing against detainees, especially the violations that occur in the “Sde Teiman” prison.
The Palestinian-French lawyer explained that as a result of the violations that Palestinian prisoners are subjected to, it has been confirmed that 24 detainees were martyred at the hands of Israeli jailers.
He added, “The lawyers accused the occupying state in general, and asked the investigating judge to go himself to conduct an investigation into who was working in the prison service at that time, who was the police chief at that time, and who was the Minister of the Interior at that time. This would entail issuing arrest warrants against those responsible for the violations if they came to France.”
Violations
Regarding the violations that Hamouri was subjected to, he said that he was arrested 6 times, most of them in administrative detention, and he was brought before the military court on charges of belonging to the Popular Front, and he was also tried on suspicion that he participated in the assassination of the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef.
He pointed out that “the occupying state will not cooperate with the French investigation committee, but our goal in raising this case is to pressure it, delegitimize it, and try to reach the issuance of arrest warrants against its symbols, and this is part of the battle we are waging at the international and UN levels.”
In previous meetings, lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, who brought the case before French courts, said that “Israel’s lack of cooperation will not prevent the investigation and summonses of the people involved.”
The two lawyers pointed out that Hamouri was subjected to various “arrests and detentions” between 2001 and 2018, and condemned his administrative detention without any formal charge, until his deportation to France in 2022.
System of repression
The Palestinian-French lawyer concluded his statements to Tel Aviv Tribune Net by saying, “The Israeli judicial system and the prison service system are part of the Zionist oppression machine that practices these violations. When we say occupation, there is no word for justice or rights, and therefore everything is harnessed to serve the Zionist project and to serve the control and oppression of the Palestinian people.”
He added, “Today we are witnessing this through a decision by the International Court of Justice and other international decisions, but the barbaric occupying state acts as if it were a state above the law, whether internally or externally.”