A French investigating judge has been investigating since mid-July the arbitrary detention and torture attributed to Israel by Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, following his complaint filed in March. The Israeli Prison Authority did not respond to AFP when contacted.
Salah Hamouri, 39, filed a complaint with civil action at the end of March to denounce the conditions of his incarceration and his expulsion by Israel in 2022 as well as various previous facts. This type of procedure normally allows after several months to obtain the appointment of an independent investigating judge to investigate.
“No legal reason”
But this time, according to a source close to the case told AFP on Tuesday, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) initially opposed the opening of a judicial investigation, considering that “the conditions of detention described, assuming they were proven, do not appear to be characteristic” tortures.
The investigating judge, who has the final say, decided to investigate these facts anyway, considering that “the reality of the abusive practices suffered and reported by the complainant is plausible and the facts reported are likely to constitute the criminal offences of torture and acts of barbarity”according to its order of July 17, which AFP has seen.
The investigation, opened for torture, acts of barbarity and arbitrary detention by a person in a position of public authority, will have as its objective: “purpose of determining the characterization or not of these offenses”the magistrate decides.
For Salah Hamouri’s lawyers, Maîtres William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, “Faced with the refusal of the Pnat, without any legal reason, for these very serious facts to be investigated, the investigating magistrate took his responsibilities”. “Salah Hamouri expects rapid and intense investigations. The lack of cooperation from Israel will not prevent investigations and summonses from being sent to those involved.”they add.
“Punitive isolation”
In their complaint, they claim that their client, “target of intense harassment by the Israeli authorities and denial of his fundamental rights”a “has been subjected to repeated arbitrary detentions and has suffered acts of torture during these deprivations of liberty”. They evoke different “arrests and detentions”between 2001 and 2018, and especially denounce his administrative detention “without official charge” between March and December 2022.
For them, various facts amount to torture, such as the conditions of his transfer in July 2022 to a new place of detention, with deprivation of food and sleep, a “punitive isolation” following his hunger strike or the “prolonged restriction or even ban on contact with family”A French psychiatrist described in September 2023 a “complete post-traumatic stress disorder of severe intensity” at Mr. Hamouri’s, according to the complaint.
“Forced exile”
The lawyers include in their complaint his “forced exile” to France at the end of 2022. A resident of East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, Salah Hamouri had been expelled after the revocation of his residence permit by the Israeli authorities.
Arrested and imprisoned in 2005, Salah Hamouri was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison by an Israeli court that found him guilty of participating in a plot to assassinate Ovadia Yossef, former chief rabbi of Israel, founder of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.
The Franco-Palestinian, who claims his innocence in this affair, was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange which led to the release of Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Israel suspects him of links – which he denies – with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization considered terrorist by the Hebrew state and the European Union. Paris had considered his expulsion “contrary to law”while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had described it as “war crime”.
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