Even so, Jabour was held without charges and was not allowed to see an attorney for the first month of his Israeli captivity. Then, in late September 2006, he finally got a chance to speak with Nizar Mahajna, a lawyer for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, who happened to run into Jabour in the Kishon Prison where Jabour’s military court hearing was taking place.
“I’m not one of them,” Mahajna quotes Jabour as telling him, meaning that he was not a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza. “Do you have time for me?”
“He seemed very frightened,” the attorney would later recall.
In October 2006, Israeli security sources told ICIJ that Jabour most likely would be charged with membership in a terrorist organization, unauthorized military training, and posing a threat to state security.
But apparently, over the next several weeks, Israeli officials changed their minds and decided that the former US prisoner was not so much of a threat after all. In November 2006, the day before a military court was scheduled to consider extending his remand, authorities simply released him to relatives in Gaza.
Reprinted by permission of the Center for Public Integrity.
palestinian prisoners in the israeli jail of shikma in the city of ashkelon on august 14, 2004.
The us has adopted many controversial israeli interrogation and counterterrorism methods since 9/11.
This map, released by the European Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on June 7, 2006, indicates flight routes used by the cia to transfer terrorism suspects to and from secret prisons. the council of europe reported that 14 European states had colluded in some way with the CIA.
