FREE KHADER ADNAN

[ayman]

Khader Adnan is a Palestinian who has been on hunger strike for 57 days, to protest against his imprisonment in an Israeli prison without trial and against how badly the prisoners are treated, please sign this petition that will be sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

http://signon.org/sign/khader-adnans-lif...by=2470434


A former Irish hunger striker, who protested along side Bobby Sands has also sent his solidarity and prayers to Khader Adnan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...1iwWZJPl_k

The Israeli's call it 'Administrative Detention' which is very much like 'Internment' in Ireland during the troubles, when the British army were allowed to arrest anyone without trial. Please show your support.

[Priya]

bump

[shakur420]

Heard about this guy. Thanks for posting.

[Rebel Assault]

signed!

[shakur420]

In return for ending the hunger strike they say they're not gonna extend his detention, they'll let him go on April 17. Don't know what this really means...
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Articl...?id=258739

[shakur420]

Saving Khader Adnan's life is saving our own soul







The Palestinian prisoner's case is a microcosm of the unbearable cruelty of prolonged occupation.

The world watches as tragedy unfolds beneath its gaze. Khader Adnan is entering his 61st day as a hunger striker in an Israeli prison, being held under an administrative detention order without trial, charges, or any indication of the evidence against him.

From the outset of his brutal arrest in the middle of the night - in the presence of his wife and young daughters - he has been subject to the sort of inhumane and degrading treatment that is totally unlawful and morally inexcusable. Its only justification is to intimidate, if not terrify, Palestinians who have lived for 45 years under the yoke of an oppressive occupation. This occupation continuously whittles away at Palestinians' rights under international humanitarian law - especially their right to self-determination, which is encroached upon every time a new housing unit is added to the colonising settlements that dot the hilltops surrounding Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The case of Khader Adnan is a revealing microcosm of the unbearable cruelty of prolonged occupation. It draws a contrast in the West between the dignity of an Israeli prisoner and the steadfast refusal to heed the abuse of thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails through court sentence or administrative order.

Mr Adnan's father poignantly highlighted this contrast a few days ago by referring to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by Hamas in captivity for several years and recently released in good health: "Where are the mother and father of Gilad Shalit? Do they not feel for me in this humanitarian case? Where are they?" He went further in drawing this comparison: "My son was arrested from his house, from among his wife and children, was taken prisoner. He was not carrying any weapon. Whereas Shalit was fighting against the people of Gaza, and destroying their homes, and firing upon, and Shalit was released."

It is true that foreign authority figures, from the UN Secretary General on down, showed their empathy for the agony experienced by Israelis concerned for the wellbeing of Shalit, but these same personalities are notably silent in the much more compelling ordeal being experienced before our eyes in the form of Mr Adnan's captivity, seemingly unto death. It should not be surprising that surviving family members of IRA hunger strikers should step forward expressing solidarity with Mr Adnan and compare the Irish experience of resistance to that of the Palesinians.

And who is Khader Adnan? We do not know very much about him except that he is a member of the Islamic Jihad Party. There are no accusations against him that implicate him in violence against civilians. His fellow prisoner from an earlier period of confinement in Ashkelon Prison, Abu Maria, recalls his normalcy and humanity while sharing a cell, emphasising his interest in informing other Palestinians: "Prison was like a university in those times and he was one of the professors." Commenting on his hunger strike that has brought him extreme pain, Abu Maria says he is convinced that Khader Asnan wants to live, but will not live in humiliation: "He is showing his commitment and resistance in the only way he can right now, with his body."

Adameer, the respected Palestinian NGO concerned with prisoners, "holds Israel accountable for the life of Khader Adnan, whose health has entered an alarmingly critical stage that will now have irreversible consequences and could lead to his fatal collapse at any moment". Physicians who have observed his current condition conclude that, at most, he could live a few more days, saying that such a hunger strike cannot be sustained beyond 70 days in any event. Any attempt at forced feeding to keep a prisoner from dying is widely viewed as an additional abuse, a form of torture.

Finally, the reliance by Israel on administrative detention in cases of this sort is totally unacceptable from the perspective of the Geneva Convention, especially so when no disclosure of the exceptional circumstances that might warrant for reasons of imminent security the use of such an extra-legal form of imprisonment. There are currently at least 300 Palestinians being held in a manner similar to that of Mr Adnan, and so it is no wonder that sympathy hunger strikes among Palestinians are underway as expressions of solidarity.

Have we not reached a stage in our appreciation of human rights that we should outlaw such state barbarism? Let us hope that the awful experience of Khader Adnan does not end with his death, and let us hope further that it sparks a worldwide protest against both administrative detention and prisoner abuse. The Palestinian people have suffered more than enough already.

Read a press release issued by the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding Richard Falk's concern with Khader Adnan's situation.



February 19, 2012
Richard Falk
Al Jazeera

[shakur420]

UN rights expert urges Israel to release Palestinian detainee on hunger strike







21 February 2012 – An independent United Nations human rights expert today renewed his call on Israel to release a Palestinian prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for over two months to protest his detention and whose health is reported to be deteriorating.

Khader Adnan has been refusing food since 18 December to protest his “humiliating” detention and treatment by Israeli security forces and his objection to Israel’s use of detention without charge, according to a news release issued by the UN human rights office in Geneva (OHCHR).

“I am informed that Mr. Adnan’s health has already suffered irreparable damage, he is in jeopardy of dying at any moment,” said Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, after wrapping up a 10-day fact-finding mission to the region.

“I reiterate my call on the Government of Israel to uphold Mr. Adnan’s rights, taking full account of the extreme urgency of the situation,” he added.

The expert also stressed that “allegations of torture and other mistreatment should be promptly, independently and impartially investigated.”

Torture and cruel and degrading treatment “is not only a grave violation of human rights and a war crime; it may also be subject to international criminal accountability, including through universal jurisdiction,” said Mr. Falk, who added that Mr. Adnan’s case is emblematic of the Israeli practice of detaining Palestinians without charges.

“The Government of Israel calls this ‘administrative detention,’ but it is more honestly termed detention without charges, or arbitrary detention,” he said.

During his recent visit to the region, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody when he met with the Palestinian Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs.

According to information received by Mr. Falk, Israel currently has some 300 Palestinians detained without charges, and an estimated 4,400 Palestinian detainees in its prisons.

Several experts on prison conditions that Mr. Falk consulted with raised concerns regarding physical, verbal and psychological abuse; lack of access to proper medical treatment; medical neglect; widespread use of solitary confinement for extended periods; overcrowding and decrepit cells; and the lack of family visits.

“It is dismaying to note that these concerns have been raised for many years without producing reforms or well evidenced responses to the charges,” the expert stressed.

“I will continue to investigate and report on the situation of Palestinian prisoners. And I would add that the violation of the rights of thousands of prisoners, Palestinian or otherwise, should be given the utmost priority by the international community.”

During his visit, which included Egypt and Jordan, Mr. Falk was unable to travel to the Gaza Strip or to Israel. He was also unable to hear from Palestinian refugees elsewhere than Jordan, due to the prevailing situation in Syria and unwillingness of the Government of Lebanon to receive his mission.

Mr. Falk, who reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council in an independent and unpaid capacity, will submit his full report on his mission to the region in June.



February 21, 2012
UN News Centre

---

I can't access the UNCHR website, don't know if there's a problem or just my computer. I have problems with UN websites sometimes, but it's not working on my phone either. The press release they're talking about, I read it yesterday, on my phone, so I'm guessing the page is just down or something right now, I don't know. Either way, it's still linked in the articles, but basically says the same shit, from what I remember.

[ayman]

Yes Shakur i read about that too! Its such a shame though, his detention was meant to be until May, but all they have done is shorten the sentence by a month. In fairness it is a great victory by one man and his family, but it is a disgrace that he will still be there for another 2 months, due to the lack of support and intervention from other countries and the UN.

[shakur420]

Khader Adnan and now-normalized Western justice



Each year, the U.S. State Department, as required by law, issues a “Human Rights Report” which details abuses by other countries. To call it an exercise in hypocrisy is to understate the case: it is almost impossible to find any tyrannical power denounced by the State Department which the U.S. Government (and its closest allies) do not regularly exercise itself. Indeed, it’s often impossible to imagine how the authors of these reports can refrain from cackling mischievously over the glaring ironies of what they are denouncing (my all-time favorite example is discussed in the update here).

In 2010, the State Department included a long section on the oppressive detention practices of China. The “principal human rights problems” of the tyrannical Chinese government include “a lack of due process in judicial proceedings” and “the use of administrative detention.” Indeed, “arbitrary arrest and detention remained serious problems. The law grants police broad administrative detention powers and the ability to detain individuals for extended periods without formal arrest or criminal charges.” Can one even find the words to condemn these Chinese monsters?

Time‘s Tony Karon today writes about the case of Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old Palestinian baker currently imprisoned without charges by the Israeli government on accusations that he is a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. To protest his due-process-free imprisonment and that of thousands of other Palestinians, Adnan has been on a sustained hunger strike and is now close to death. Karon writes:

Quote:Israel has not charged Adnan with any crime . . . Israel deals with such cases using a legal framework based on emergency laws left over from British colonial rule to detain any suspect for six months at a time without needing to provide evidence or lay charges against them. When a detainee’s six-month spell has expired, the detention can simply be renewed.

Writing today about the Adnan case in The National, Joseph Dana explains that Israel imprisons Adnan and so many like him pursuant to “a framework of laws and statutes to govern all aspects of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” and “many, if not most, of the laws governing movement of Palestinians, freedom of speech and association are draconian in nature; none is more alarming than the administrative detention order. The order enables Israel to hold prisoners indefinitely without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.” Behold the principles of justice driving this Israeli behavior:

Quote:Mr Adnan’s story is emblematic of the administrative detention experience of many Palestinians. He claims to have been beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, and began his hunger strike in protest. On January 8, Mr Adnan was given a four-month administrative detention order, which can be renewed indefinitely, after a military judge reviewed classified information against him. Evidence and allegations have not been made available to Adnan or to his lawyer.

According to the Israeli military, information in administrative detention cases is kept classified in order to protect sources of intelligence. To this day, the only claim that Israel has made about Mr Adnan’s detention is that he is a high risk to Israeli security.

Of course, the U.S. has its own system of indefinite detention now firmly in place. Both within war zones and outside of them, the Obama administration continues to hold hundreds of prisoners who have never been charged with any crime even as they have remained captive for many years. Put another way, both the U.S. and its closest client state have completely normalized exactly the type of arbitrary, due-process-free imprisonment the U.S. has long condemned as the defining attribute of despotism. And, of course, the U.S. Congress just enacted, and President Obama just signed, a law that expressly permits indefinite detention.

Worse, these countries have normalized this practice not merely in terms of government policy, but also the expectations of their own citizens. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found widespread support across the American ideological spectrum for maintaining Guantanamo, where more than 150 prisoners are still held without any charges of any kind, while Dana today writes that “to date, Mr Adnan’s hunger strike has stirred little debate in the Israeli press about the legitimacy of administrative detention” (this is the seventh time Adnan has been imprisoned without charges). The hallmark of the Supremely Authoritarian Citizen — dutifully reciting unproven Government accusations as Truth to justify due-process-free punishment (he’s a Terrorist!) — is now extremely commonplace in the citizenries of both countries.

Even random glances at State Department Human Rights reports will lead one to the most suffocatingly hypocritical denunciations by the U.S. Government. It condemns China, for instance, for the harsh detention conditions of one detainee who “was repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement...The longest period of such confinement reportedly lasted 11 months.” Accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning, convicted of no crime, spent 10 months in extreme solitary confinement; the U.S. prison industry is teeming with prisoners who are subjected to this abuse (as one American held for 10 years in solitary confinement by China put it last month in an Op-Ed: “Imagine how shocked I was to find years later that we, the United States of America, hold more human beings in long-term solitary confinement than any other country in the world. I had supposed it would be China — but, no, it’s us”); meanwhile, Israel routinely uses harsh solitary confinement for Palestinian prisoners and even places Palestinian children in solitary confinement for weeks on end.

The State Department report on China also accuses the Communist state of “extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process.” That, of course, is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing continuously with its manic fixation on drone murders in at least six Muslim countries and its targeted, due-process-free execution of its own citizens (and their children). Again, not only does this provoke very little controversy among Americans, this power long cited by the State Department as the ultimate indiciator of tyranny — “executions without due process” — now provokes widespread cheers from majorities of all American political factions. Israel, of course, has been using due-process-free “targeted assassinations” for many years.

What’s so notable here isn’t merely that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in the very practices which the U.S. annually and flamboyantly condemns as “human rights abuses” when done by others. It’s that these abuses have now been going on for so long in the two countries, are so entrenched, that they have been absorbed into the political landscape as barely noticed accoutrements. They have become completely normalized — not just legally and politically but culturally – to the point where they are scarcely controversial.

Earlier today, Foreign Policy Managing Editor Blake Hounshell wrote about the Palestinian hunger striker: “If Khader Adnan is really a member of Islamic Jihad, he should be charged and tried in court. If he’s committed no crime, release him.” That this even needs to be said at all is a potent sign of how severely our conceptions of justice have collapsed (just like: the U.S. Government shouldn’t be executing its own citizens based on the secret orders of the President without any due process). But even more telling is that it is the objections to these practices, rather than the practices themselves, that are considered fringe and radical. That’s because tyrannical practices, when acquiesced to for a long enough time, become norms, and only radicals, by definition, object to those.

* * * * *

The U.S. last year also denounced China because “police surveillance, harassment and detentions of activists increased around politically sensitive events”; because “Internet users at cafes were often subject to surveillance”; and because “former political prisoners and their families frequently were subjected to police surveillance, telephone wiretaps, searches, and other forms of harassment.” Today, Associated Press — continuing its superb investigative series on the massive surveillance practices aimed at American Muslims by the NYPD, often in conjunction with the CIA — describes how Muslims student groups and Muslim students in the United States, suspected of no wrongdoing whatsoever, were subject to extensive surveillance by police officials, including a file collecting their emails.





UPDATE: Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev appeared on CNN International earlier today and actually faced some probing, adversarial questions about this case from Hala Gorani (the video is below; I wasn’t previously familiar with Gorani, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be CNN International because no anchor on the U.S. version of CNN would dare conduct such an adversarial interview with an Israeli official). Here was the first exchange:

Quote:GORANI: So if there’s any evidence there against this man, Khader Annan, why isn’t it (a) being shared with his lawyer, why isn’t he being charged officially, and why isn’t this case being brought to trial? Why is this man being held without charge?

REGEV: First of all, there’s been a number of hearings already . . . . It’s clear that in Terrorist cases, often you rely on intelligence information – there are problems with sources and methods – and Israel, like other democracies, like the United States, like Great Britain, there is a certain amount of discretion you have. But I think it’s important to say here, if I might, that this man is a self-professed leader in Islamic Jihad . . . .

Gorani asks several more times: if, as you claim, there is so much evidence proving he’s guilty, why can’t you put him on trial and show the evidence? It’s really worth watching the whole interview, both because it reveals how rare effective adversarial interviews are (it’s hard to imagine many establishment journalists grilling an American official this way, though it does sometimes happen), and because Regev immediately cites the fact that the U.S. imprisons people without due process as the excuse for why Israel can:


Click here to watch the video



February 20, 2012
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

[shakur420]

A Shining Victory for Non-Violence



How Khader Adnan Exposed the Irrationality of Administrative Detention

A PALESTINIAN village, somewhere in the West Bank.

In the middle of the night, banging on the door and shouts in Arabic: “Israeli army. Open up!”

Somebody – most often the mother – opens the door. The heavily armed soldiers rush in and drag the victim out of bed. They throw him to the floor in full view of his wife and children (or parents and siblings), blindfold and handcuff him behind his back, and drag him to a jeep. The victim may be 15 or 70 years old or any age in between.

After several days of interrogation, with or without “moderate physical pressure” (as a High Court judge delicately put it), if no satisfactory confession is forthcoming, the prisoner is consigned to “administrative detention” which may last six months and can be renewed for year after year . The judicial overview is a farce. The prisoner is not informed of what he is accused and by whom, evidence is kept secret from both the prisoner and his or her lawyer.

In the course of the occupation, tens of thousands of Palestinians have experienced this procedure. At present, some 300 are in administrative detention (among the ten thousand or so who were judged by military or civilian courts.)

Now one of them has said: Enough!

* * *

KHADER ADNAN MUHAMMAD MUSA has been arrested several times before.

The 34 year old activist from the village of Arabba near Jenin in the northern West Bank has been an Islamic Jihad leader from his student days in Bir Zeit University. Easily recognizable by his especially long black beard, he has advanced to the front rank of the organization in the West Bank.

Islamic Jihad is the most extreme of the significant Palestinian groups, and Adnan has openly, on camera, preached armed resistance. He has called upon young Palestinians to put on explosive vests and carry out suicide attacks.

The occupation authorities have had their eyes on him for a long time, and so have the security services of the Palestinian Authority. No wonder, because Adnan has accused the latter many times of collaborating with the Israeli enemy and acting on their orders.

When he was arrested again last December, he demanded to be put on trial or released. When neither happened, he declared a hunger strike.

A hunger strike of 28 days is generally considered very long. Adnan fasted for 66 days, which may be a world record, except for the Irish freedom fighter (or “terrorist”) who was taunted by Margaret Thatcher and fasted to death. If a hunger strike lasts for 70 days, death is almost inevitable.

At the end he was transferred to a hospital, both his ankles and one of his hands shackled to the bed, though he could hardly stand. By now, his strike was attracting world-wide attention. In Israel itself, reaction in the media was limited, but peace and human rights groups came out in support of Adnan. Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli organization founded years ago by the psychiatrist Ruchama Marton, led the struggle with special fervor. Media around the world, including the New York Times, took the case up.

At long last, Israeli diplomats and security officials became seriously alarmed. If Adnan fasted to death, no one could foresee the consequences. In the occupied territories, widespread riots could be expected, perhaps with further deaths. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails could start a general hunger strike, which could easily spread to the Palestinian population outside. In the world media, Israel would be compared to Syria and Iran. Worse, the very practice of administrative detention would come under international scrutiny.

So the political and security establishment swallowed their pride and offered a compromise: if Adnan abandoned the strike at once, the security authorities would not renew the administrative arrest warrant after April, when it is due to expire.

Adnan, who has already gained the status of a national hero, accepted. He has certainly achieved his main purpose: to draw attention to the practice itself.

ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION is not an Israeli invention. Israel inherited it from the British colonial regime, as part of the Emergency Regulations, which were described by the future Israeli Minister of Justice as “worse than the Nazi laws”. But when Israel came into being, the regulations remained in force or were supplanted by similar laws ”made in Israel”.

Successive security officials have maintained that administrative detention is absolutely essential in the “fight against terrorism”.

Their point of view can be illustrated by a case in which I was involved. When I was the Editor in Chief of the Haolam Hazeh news magazine, an Arab Israeli journalist – let’s call him Ahmad – who was working for our Arab edition, disappeared. After searching for some time, I learned that he had been taken into administrative detention. Since I was a Member of the Knesset at the time, I was allowed to speak with a senior officer of the Security Service (Shabak or Shin Bet), who disclosed to me, in confidence, the reason for the arrest.

It appeared that the service had caught a member of Fatah from abroad, who was carrying a message to two Arabs in Israel, asking them to set up Fatah cells in the country. Fatah, at the time, was considered a dangerous terrorist organization. One of the two was Ahmad.

“Frankly,” the Shabak officer told me, “We have no idea whether your man is a terrorist or was chosen at random by the Fatah people in Jordan. We have no evidence that could stand up in court. We certainly cannot disclose in court that we have caught the messenger. But we also cannot leave Ahmad free, because he may well be a dangerous terrorist. What would you do in our position, bearing the responsibility we have?”

Frankly, I don’t cherish the idea of being blown to pieces by a suicide bomber. But I answered that under these circumstances, Ahmad should be released at once. However, they kept him in prison for months. When he was finally released, he emigrated to America. That may well have been a condition for getting out of prison.

I have already written about a different case that concerned me directly and which taught me the inherent danger of this practice. In his first extensive interview after coming to power in 1977, Menachem Begin disclosed that 20 years earlier, when Isser Harel (nicknamed “little Isser”) was in charge of all Israeli security services, he proposed to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to put me in administrative detention as a Soviet spy. Harel had a pathological hatred for me and later wrote a whole book about it.

The accusation was quite ridiculous, because I have never in my life been a communist, nor even a Marxist. At the same time that Arthur Koestler wrote his ground-breaking book “Darkness at Noon” I, then a teenager, thought that something must be very wrong with a system which condemns almost all its founders as imperialist spies. Later, whenever an Israeli delegation was invited to Soviet Russia, the KGB struck my name out. (Viewers of the excellent British TV series “Spooks” will recognize at once that this is exactly the hallmark of a master spy.)

Ben-Gurion was not one of my greatest fans, or, to put it simply, he hated my guts. Since I attacked him every week, that was quite understandable. However, he was also a shrewd politician and was afraid that my arrest might cause a scandal. Therefore he told Harel that before arresting me, he should enlist the support of Begin, the leader of the largest opposition party.

Begin told him: “If you have evidence, please show it to me. If not, I shall fight against your scheme tooth and nail.” Ben-Gurion dropped the idea, and Begin sent his most trusted lieutenant to warn me.

If Begin had supported my arrest, who would have doubted that the Shabak had solid proof of my treachery? My voice would have been silenced, my magazine destroyed.

IN A democratic state, there is no place for administrative detention, nor even for trials in which vital evidence is withheld from the accused and defense lawyers. There must be better ways of protecting informers and other secret sources of information. For example, allowing defendants in such cases to choose lawyers only from a restricted list of those with the highest security clearance.

This, by the way, did indeed happen in the most sensitive security trial of all: that of the nuclear whistleblower (or “spy”) Mordechai Vanunu.

The deal worked out in the Adnan case exposes the irrationality of the system. If Adnan was so dangerous that he had to be imprisoned without charge or trial, how can he be released? And if he was not so dangerous, why was he held in the first place?

IN THE end, Adnan has created a paradox for himself and his comrades.

The very essence of his and his organization’s ideology is that there is no effective method of resistance to the Israeli occupation and oppression but violence of the most extreme kind. Non-violence, in their view, is nonsense. Worse, it means capitulation and, in the end, betrayal. Islamic Jihad now accuses Hamas of flirting with this idea.

Yet a hunger strike is the ultimate form of non-violence. Ghandhi used it frequently, relying on its moral impact.

Khaled Adnan’s achievement is exactly that: a shining victory for non-violence.



February 24-26, 2012
Uri Avnery
CouterPunch