Center for the Defence of the Individual - HaMoked to the HCJ: instruct the state to inform the family of an injured Palestinian minor of his location. The HCJ ordered the state to submit a general response on notification of place of detention to detainees' families
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
23.11.2012

HaMoked to the HCJ: instruct the state to inform the family of an injured Palestinian minor of his location. The HCJ ordered the state to submit a general response on notification of place of detention to detainees' families

On November 20, 2012, at 08:00 a.m., a 16 year old Palestinian, who lives in the district of Hebron, arrived at the Etzion District Coordination Office (DCO), after he was called for interrogation. The youth, with a leg injury and using crutches, arrived there with his father, who parted from him at the entrance to the DCO. After several hours had passed without any news from his wounded son or about him, the concerned father sought HaMoked's assistance. HaMoked contacted the military, the police, and the Israel Prison Service (IPS), in an attempt to trace the youth, who was nowhere listed as a detainee. None of the authorities provided any information.

On November 21, 2012, more than 24hrs into his disappearance, HaMoked filed an urgent petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the High Court of Justice (HCJ), to order the state to inform his family of his location. HaMoked asserted that both statutory law and common law of Israel require that a detainee's holding place be notified without delay, and that the passing of time was frustrating the exercise of the most basic rights of the detained minor, who remained defenseless against the arbitrary power of the arresting agency. The court set a hearing for the following morning. Later that same day, the state representative notified that the minor was being held at the Ofer detention facility, and requested the petition be dismissed.

On the following morning, before the hearing, HaMoked contacted the Ofer detention facility, and was told that the minor was not listed or present there. During the hearing, conducted as scheduled, the state acknowledged that the minor had not been processed at the Ofer facility, and it was not known where he had been held during the night. After HaMoked clarified that this was not an incidental failure, the court instructed the state to submit within 15 days a general response on the provision of notice to the families as to the place of detention. At the end of that day, the youth was processed at the Ofer facility.

HaMoked reasserts that it is unacceptable for the state to place a person under arrest, without notifying his family and without immediately recording his place of detention.

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