3.
Death Penalty
…
Another Nail
in the Coffin of Palestinian Justice
I went home and
turned on the television. When I saw my sons on the screen in a
courtroom, and when the judgement was announced, I lost
consciousness. They took my sons, judged
them, and executed the death penalty without letting me see them. On
31 August 1998 (two days after the execution) three men from the
Palestinian police, one of them a major, came to my house at about 3pm
and took me and my husband in a military vehicle without saying where
we were going. We arrived at a detention centre where some senior
officers said that they would allow me to see my sons. I replied,
“After you have killed them.” So they took me to the martyrs’ cemetery
(they had taken them out of their tombs, as they had buried them
immediately after their deaths), and they uncovered their heads, which
were shredded with bullets. Their father couldn’t bear it, so he fell
unconscious. I tried to touch them and kiss them. They were covered
with fresh blood as if they had just been killed.
From an
interview with Mariam Issa, mother of Kamal and Ra’ed Abu-Sultan, who
were sentenced to death by gunfire, the first Palestinians against
whom death penalty was judged and executed by the PA.
According to the
Presidential Decision # 1 of 1994, which calls for the continuation of
work under the rules, laws and orders that were in use before 5 June
1967 in the Palestinian areas, the Palestinian courts went back to using
the Jordanian penal law. In Gaza the Egyptian authorities between 1948
and 1967 had reinstated the use of death penalty. In addition, the
Palestinian judiciary had to deal with the heritage of military
laws and orders left
behind from the Palestinian revolution in exile (the PLO code of
1979).What made things worse was the Presidential decision to establish
the State Security Court in 1995. Since then, these courts have issued
26 judgements of death penalty against Palestinian citizens, of whom
three judgements were actually executed.
Individuals who are
sentenced to death in Palestinian courts are always deprived of the
following rights:
-The right to have a
lawyer defending them before and during the session, as death penalty is
usually taken in exceptional sessions in either the State Security Court
or the military court.
-Courts often accept
evidence obtained after torturing the suspect, and such evidence could
be the only way to convict the suspect.
-Court sessions
always take place exceptionally in secret, after midnight, in a hasty
rapid manner, thus not leaving any chance for a fair trial.
-The suspect is deprived of the right to
appeal to a higher court against the judgement. The law only allows for
the President of the Executive Committee (Arafat) to approve judgements
or to cancel them.
A) Death Penalty in the West Bank and Gaza
Case Study: Death by Gunfire for an officer
in Khan-Younis
After 2 am on
Friday 26 February 1999, ten masked armed men stood abreast in
al-Saraya prison in Gaza, pointed their automatic rifles at a navy
officer, and opened fire, killing him instantly. Earlier that night,
the special military court had sentenced the victim, Ahmad Hasan
Abu-Mustafa, 48, after convicting him of raping a six year old child
from Khan-Younis camp.
The details of the
judgement taken by the military court against Abu-Mustafa were:
-Hard
labour for 15 years, according to Articles 350 and 356 of the PLO Code #
5 of 1979.
-Reducing his
military rank of colonel to soldier.
-Executing him
by gunfire for stirring up the public against the Authority, as a result
of his crime.
The Palestinian
masses received this judgement with relief, so President Arafat approved
it immediately (one hour after the session).
The PHRMG condemns
the crime of raping the child, but at the same time records the
following notes regarding the death penalty for Abu-Mustafa:
-In the Court
session there was no chance for defending the suspect, as the session
lasted for less than two hours, late at night, thus depriving him of a
fair trial. A military lawyer was appointed for the defense, not a civil
one, contradicting Article 200A of the law.
-No appeal or review
of the judgement (by a higher judicial party)was allowed. On the
contrary, the Court session was approved by the President, and the
judgement was executed all within three hours' time.
-According to the
judgement, Abu-Mustafa was sentenced for 15 years hard labour for raping
a child, and the death penalty for the charge of stirring up the masses
against the Authority, which is a general charge. This contradicts
Article 52B of the PLO Code of 1979 which states that “if a suspect is
charged with both a private and a public crime, the private one is
considered.”
-The execution of
the death penalty in this case took place on a Friday, which obviously
contradicts the law, Article 334 of the revolutionary penal law, which
states that “the death penalty is not to be executed on Fridays,
Sundays, religious or nationalistic feasts.”
The aforementioned
violations of the Revolutionary Penal Law, which is used in those
courts, and the hasty rapid way in which such serious judgements are
executed represent important questions regarding the credibility of the
judicial system in Palestine. Serious fears of collusion of the
judiciary with the Executive Authority exist, resulting in fabricating
judgements which are convenient for the latter and which lack legality
and credibility in sentencing Palestinian citizens to death.
It is also clear
that the Palestinian judicial services have become a hostage responding
to the reactions and pressure of the mood of the masses. The text of the
law is no longer the judge here.
B) Death Penalty and International Law
The International
Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 3 the right for every
individual to remain alive. It also says clearly that “it is forbidden
to torture, ill-treat, or degrade the humanity of any person.” As
mentioned in Article 6 of the International Convention for Civil and
Political Rights, "the right to be alive has to be committed to every
human being, and the law has to protect that."
The death penalty is
similar to any crime involving the killing of people, regardless of the
law. It degrades the value of humanity and breaks all the foundations of
other human rights, as mentioned in the International Declaration of
Human Rights.
CONCLUSION
Death Penalty … Killer of Humanity and
Humans
The cruelty of the
death penalty is unlimited. The horror it creates from the moment it is
announced inside the Court cannot be softened by any words or
explanations. The person sentenced to death spends the following minute,
hours or days in complete isolation from the world, in what are known as
“death wards” inside the prison, waiting for his fate. His relatives and
friends are usually deprived of the right to see him, as in the cases of
the Abu-Sultan brothers, and officer Abu-Mustafa.
Because death penalty is a judgement that,
once executed, cannot be corrected since it ends the life of the
suspect, and because there are worries and concerns, from sociologists
and psychologists as to whether the death penalty is an influential
method to discourage crimes, we in the PHRMG call upon the PLC, as the
highest legislative authority, to put an end to this issue by
legislating laws that abolish the death penalty forever. We also call
upon the PA not to execute death penalty judgements against prisoners,
and to have them brought again before civil courts in fair and decent
trials.
