On November 28, 2016, at the pre-dawn hours, soldiers arrested a 17-year old minor with a leg injury which required surgery, at his home in Ramallah. At the request of the concerned family, HaMoked contacted the military control center, tasked with providing information on detainees’ whereabouts, but the control center had no information about where the minor was being held.
A day later, the mother received a phone call from a man speaking Arabic who said he was an “officer” and asked for her consent to perform surgery on her son’s leg, but refused to tell her where he was being held. Throughout these hours, although this was a matter of an injured minor, the military control center knew nothing about the detainee. Given the urgency of the matter and the rising concern for the juvenile’s wellbeing, HaMoked filed a
habeas corpus petition to discover his whereabouts. HaMoked recalled that
the military was obligated to swiftly notify the families about a person’s arrest and whereabouts, in order to guaranty to the maximum the basic rights of both the detainee and his relatives, and stressed that the military routinely breached its obligation.
On November 30, 2016 the state claimed in its
response to the petition that the minor was under police guard in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. It was further stated that the military had driven the mother to the hospital earlier that day. However, in a phone conversation with the mother after her return from the hospital, HaMoked learnt that contrary to what she was told beforehand, the mother was not allowed to meet her son or stay at the hospital until the operation ended; she was only allowed to see him from a distance. The alarmed mother was surprised to realize that the military had taken the effort to drive her to the hospital only to have her sign a consent form for the operation! This is outrageous conduct on part of the military, which breached its duty toward the juvenile detainee and his anxious family, and after having finally consented to disclose the minor’s whereabouts, made cynical use of the mother who was looking forward to meeting her injured son.
