By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHERAN, Iran – Mohammad Mostafaei the human rights attorney who represented Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the mother of two whose death by stoning sentence was stayed after international outcry over her case, has gone missing.  Amnesty International reported that Mostafaei was called in on Saturday for questioning at Teheran’s Evin prison and appears to have gone missing after his release.

Mostafaei’s collegues have said that they believe he is currently in hiding.

Iranian authorities have detained Mostafaei’s wife, Fereshteh Halimi, and brother-in-law, Farhad Halimi, in order to pressure Mostafaei to turn himself in. The two currently remain in detention and have not been allowed access to their lawyer, according to Amnesty International.

Mostafaei, an open critic of the Iranian judicial system, has defended many political prisoners, juvenile offenders, and individuals sentenced to death by stoning. His blog helped to generate much of the international outrage over Ashtiani’s stoning sentence. 

The last message posted on Mostafaei’s blog was on Friday July 23 when he said: “Today I was again contacted after being interrogated, I was summoned through a telephone call. I don’t know what the problem is this time. At any rate, tomorrow I have to go to the Evin prosecutor’s office. Maybe they will arrest me, I don’t know.”

Earlier this month Iranian officials said that Ashtiani would not be executed by stoning, but said that she could still face execution by hanging for her conviction of adultery.

Shadi Sadr, a well-known women’s rights advocate forced to leave Iran several months ago, worked with Mostafaei in the past on behalf of women sentenced to death by stoning.  She says that she believes the regime is reacting to the “international sensitivity” by placing pressure on Mostafaei.

Sadr added that the Iranian government’s reaction embodies the plight of human rights advocates in Iran in general.

She says that Mostafaei “worked within the framework of the laws of the Islamic republic, he never crossed the red lines set by the Islamic republic. This case just shows the increasing pressure on human rights activists and how red lines and limitations are becoming every day tighter and tighter.”

Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director, said: “Mohammad Mostafaei is a thorn in the side of the Iranian authorities and we fear that he is being persecuted in an attempt to stop him carrying out his professional activities.”

According to the BBC, the Iranian government has also put pressure on another attorney involved in Ashtiani’s case, as well as Ashtiani’s son, who has fervently campaigned for her release.

For more information, please see:

AP – Amnesty: Lawyer in Iranian stoning case missing – 28 July 2010

BBC – Lawyer in Iran stoning case ‘missing’ – 28 July 2010

Radio Free Europe – Iranian Authorities Pressure Prominent Lawyer By Holding Family Members ‘Hostage’ – 27 July 2010

By Polly Johnson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – Two policemen accused of beating twenty-eight year old Khalid Said to death outside a café in Alexandria in June attended the first court hearing in their trial, which was postponed until September 25.

Mahmoud Salah and Awad Ismail Suleiman have been accused of use of excessive force and unlawful arrest. They stood in cages during yesterday’s hearing in an Alexandria criminal court.

The case that has sparked international outrage began when the two plainclothes officers dragged Said out of an Internet café and brutally beat him to death in front of witnesses. Autopsies showed that Said died from asphyxiation after swallowing a packet of drugs. Yet, skepticism of the autopsy results surfaced after gruesome images of Said’s badly beaten and bruised face circulated over the Internet.

Said was allegedly targeted by the officers after he posted a video of them splitting the spoils of a drug bust.

If convicted, Salah and Suleiman could face between three and fifteen years in prison.

In addition to inciting protests and demonstrations throughout Egypt, the killing has highlighted the problem of Egyptian police brutality, which has been blamed on Egypt’s emergency law. The law, which has been in place for three decades, permits officers to arrest people without charge and detain them indefinitely. Though prosecution of public officers is rare, as Al Jazeera reports, activists say that this case could prove to be a turning point in this aspect of Egypt’s history.

A major concern as the case resumes is witness protection. Amnesty International reported that a friend of Said who was collecting information on the case was attacked and threatened by attackers armed with knives.

“The Egyptian authorities must ensure that the witnesses to the assault on Khaled Mohammed Said are provided with all possible protection both to ensure their own safety and as a means of encouraging other witnesses to come forward,” said Malcolm Smart, the director of Amnesty’s International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

Said’s lawyers and family have said that they are seeking to upgrade the charges against Salah and Suleiman to murder.

“If we succeed in that, I think this will be the turning point. If not, I think [torture and brutality] will be the normal and systematic practice and they will consider all the pressure of the public nothing,” said Hafez Abu Saeda, director of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and one of the family’s attorneys. “This will be a message to the police officers: You are protected from any punishment, you are free to do what you want to do.”

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Egypt police trial adjourned – 27 July 2010

BBC – Egypt police in brutality trial over Khaled Said death – 27 July 2010

Christian Science Monitor – Khalid Said case: Is Egypt cracking down on police brutality? – 27 July 2010

CNN – Egyptian police brutality case postponed two months – 27 July 2010

Guardian – Egyptian policemen go on trial over death of activist Khaled Said – 27 July 2010

Los Angeles Times – EGYPT: Police accused of beating Khaled Saied to death appear in court – 27 July 2010

By Warren Popp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

GENEVA, Switzerland – On the twenty-third of July, the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ambassador Sihasak Phuangketkeow, announced the appointment of three independent experts to an international fact-finding mission to “investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance.” The May thirty-first raid on the flotilla resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens, including one with joint American citizenship, the injury of dozens of other activists, and the injury of several Israeli commandos.

The “independent international fact-finding mission” was established to implement a Human Rights Council Resolution, which was passed during an urgent debate on the Israeli raid on the second of June 2010. The Council deplored “the loss of life of innocent civilians” during the debate.

The Mission is expected to travel to Israel, Turkey, and Gaza in August to conduct their investigation, and will report their findings to the Council  during their next session, which is scheduled to begin on the twelfth of September.

In announcing the appointment of the experts to the panel, Ambassador Phuangketkeow said: “The expertise, independence and impartiality of the members of the mission will be devoted to clarifying the events which took place that day and their legality. We call upon all parties to fully cooperate with the mission and hope that this mission will contribute to peace in the region and justice for the victims.”

While Israel has not officially responded to the Council’s request for cooperation with the mission, as expected, Israel did not respond favourably to the announcement of the mission’s formation. A senior Israeli official told AFP, on condition of anonymity, “This panel of experts is not intending to look for the truth but to satisfy the non-democratic countries which control the Human Rights Council, who have an automatic anti-Israeli majority.” This is a common criticism of the Council voiced by observers and non-governmental organizations.

The Jerusalem Post quotes the IDF Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi as saying, “My personal opinion is that more probes into the flotilla are out of line.”

The Israeli military recently completed its own internal investigation into the probe, finding that the killings of activists were justified, but admitting that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) made some mistakes in their preparation for the raid. In addition to the military investigation, Israel has set up a panel, the Tirkel Committee, to investigate the incident, and to decide whether the raid was in compliance with international law.

It has also been reported that Israel is seriously considering cooperating with the work of an international panel proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which will include both Turkish and Israeli participation. Israel has reportedly been in consultations with the Secretary-General over the panel’s composition, and has stipulated that, in return for its cooperation, the panel should begin its work only after the Tirkel Committee completes its work, and that the panel’s findings should take precedence over all other international probes into the raid.

The Christian Science Monitor claims, “Beyond the flotilla affair, Israel wants to court the UN chief as a way of limiting the influence of the international body’s Human Rights council.” The Monitor quotes an Israeli government official as saying, “You have to distinguish between the two.” “The human rights council makes no pretense to be objective. It has a persistent and consistent anti-Israel obsession…. The same cannot be said of the secretary general. In Israel we hold him in the highest esteem.”
—
The three independent experts on the newly appointed Human Rights Council fact-minding mission are, Judge Karl T. Hudson-Phillips, Queen’s Counsel (Trinidad and Tobago), who served as a Judge of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2007; Sir Desmond de Silva, Queen’s Counsel (United Kingdom), who served as Chief Prosecutor of the UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2005 at the level of an Under-Secretary General of the United Nations; and Mary Shanthi Dairiam (Malaysia), who was a member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women from 2005 to 2008, and has been serving on the Gender Equality Task Force of the United Nations Development Programme since 2007.

For more information, please see:

The Christian Science Monitor – Israel Signals New Cooperation with UN Over Gaza Flotilla – 26 July 2010

AFP – Israel Slams UN Council’s Gaza Flotilla Probe – 25 July 2010

Jerusalem Post – Gaza Flotilla Probes are Out of Line – 25 July 2010

Al Arabiya News – UN Forum Names Team to Probe Israel Ship Raid – 23 July 2010

Arab News – UN Names Team to Probe Israel’s Ship Raid – 23 July 2010

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – Press Release: United Nations Human Rights Council Panel to Investigate Israeli Raid on Gaza Flotilla Established – 23 July 2010

By Elizabeth Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

JERUSALEM, Israel – An Arab man has been sentenced to jail time by a Jerusalem District Court for holding himself out to be a single Jewish bachelor to a Jewish woman he had consensual sex with.

According to the woman, thirty-year-old Sabbar Kashur introduced himself as a single Jew looking for a serious relationship. The two then had sex in a nearby building.  When the woman later discovered that Kashur was not Jewish, she filed a police complaint which ultimately let to charges of rape and indecent assault.

Prosecutors acknowledged that the sex was consensual, but accused Kashur of ‘rape by deceit.’

Judge Zvi Segal said, in the verdict, that the court had the duty to protect the public from sophisticated criminals who could deceive innocent victims. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated.”

The standard for ‘rape by deception,’ according to High Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, is whether an ordinary person would expect such a woman to have sex with a man without the false identity he created. Rubinstein stated that a conviction of rape should be imposed whenever a “person does not tell the truth regarding critical matters to a reasonable woman, and as a result of misrepresentation she has sexual relations with him.”

Abeer Baker, an attorney with Adalah, an organization that advocates for Arab rights in Israel, said of the legal standard: “In this case, the ruling seems to say that if a ‘reasonable’ Jewish woman knew a man was an Arab, then she would not make love to him.”

Baker called this a “dangerous precedent,” and said it opened the door to allowing the Israeli government to interfere in the private lives of citizens.

Kashur has been under house arrest for nearly two years since the incident occurred.  He said that he first met the woman, who was in her late twenties, when he was leaving a grocery store in downtown Jerusalem and she asked him about his motorcycle. He told the woman his nickname, which was ‘Dudu,’ a common Jewish nickname for Daniel. He said:

“I said my name is Dudu because that’s how everybody knows me. My wife even calls me that.”

Kashur asserts that the verdict is racist, and his lawyers are contemplating an appeal of his sentence.  He said:

“For two years I’ve been under house arrest for nothing . . . If I were Jewish they wouldn’t even have questioned me. That’s not called rape. I didn’t rape her in the forest and throw her away naked. She agreed to everything that happened.”

The High Court of Justice set a precedent for rape by deception in 2008 when they convicted Zvi Sleiman, a Jewish man who impersonated a senior official in the Housing Ministry whose wife worked in the National Insurance Institute.  He told the women he deceived that he could get them a better apartment and higher insurance payments if they slept with him.

The High Court also convicted a man on three counts of fraud for telling a woman he was a neurosurgeon in order to persuade her to have sex with him.

Elkana Laist of the Public Defender’s Office said that the Jerusalem District Court’s conviction had gone too far, “opening the door to a rape conviction every time a person lies regarding the details of his identity.” She added: “Every time the court thinks a reasonable woman would not have had sex with a man based on that representation, the man will be charged with rape. That approach is not accepted around the world either.”

Laist also said that the decision is paternalistic to women and problematic in application.  “It means that every time a man tells a woman he loves her, based on which she sleeps with him, he could be convicted of rape.”

Dana Pugach, head of the Noga Center for Victims of Crime, said, however, that she had no problem with the verdict. 

“We all have different characteristics, and it is a person’s right to have sexual relations with a person knowing the facts about those characteristics. I see no difference between impersonating a Jew if you are an Arab and a wealthy pilot when you are penniless, if those are relevant characteristics to the decision to have sex.”

A 2007 poll conducted by Israel’s Geocartography Institute found that more than fifty percent of Israeli Jews thought marrying an Arab was “equal to national treason.” 

Intermarriage between Arabs and Jews is actually forbidden in Israel, and, in the settlement of Pisgat Zeev, a vigilante group patrolled the streets for more than a decade looking for mixed couples. Another settlement, Petah Tikva, has established a team of pyschologists and counsellors to “rescue” Jewish women from relationships with Arab men.

Gideon Levy, a columnist for Haaretz, asked whether the “rape by deception” law would have been applied differently in the case of an Arab woman deceived into having sex with a Jewish man. 

“Would he have been convicted of rape?” Levy asked. “The answer is: of course not.”

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Israel jails Arab for ‘deceit rape’ – 21 July 2010

Haarezt.com – Jurists say Arab’s rape conviction sets dangerous precedent – 21 July 2010

Reuters – Israel jails Arab in “sex through fraud” case  – 21 July 2010

The Atlantic Wire – Israel Jails Arab for Bedding Jew Under False Pretenses – 21 July 2010

Haaretz.com – Arab man who posed as Jew to seduce woman convicted of rape – 20 July 2010

By Warren Popp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – On Sunday, at least forty-seven people were killed in two coordinated suicide attacks. The first occurred as the victims were waiting in line to get paid by the Iraqi government at an army office in western Baghdad, and the second occurred in al Qaim, a city in the Anbar Province in western Iraq. Most of those killed in the attacks were Sahwa militiamen, members of what is often called the Awakening movement. The Awakening movement is made up of former Sunni insurgents who joined with the United States and Iraqi forces to fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq—a shift in allegiance that many see as a key turning point in the direction of the war.

The recent attacks are part of an increase in what appear to be revenge attacks against members of the Awakening movement and their families, largely carried out by elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The attacks are generally viewed as payback for what has been viewed by many as a significant role played by the Awakening movement in fighting al-Qaeda throughout central Iraq.

The Awakening movement complains that the Shiite-led Iraqi government, which they allege has always viewed them with suspicion, neglects them and also fails to protect them and their families from revenge attacks. They claim that the government has failed to fulfill its promises to integrate twenty percent of the roughly ninety-two thousand Awakening members in the regular security forces, to find jobs for others, and to keep paying their salaries on time—the victims of the most recent attacks reportedly had not been paid in five months, and it is reported that the monthly salaries of Awakening members have been cut from the three hundred dollars when they were under United States leadership, to one hundred dollars under Iraqi government control.

According to the Awakening commander of Baghdad’s Radwaniya district, “The [Iraqi] army has good relations with us and is cooperative, but there is no support from the government.” He further claimed, “I used to command 1,240 men, each one an important part of a security net, and now I command 400 only. The rest have become either porters or cleaners or are simply paid a monthly salary and stay at home.” The poor treatment by the government is cited as the reason many people leave both the Awakening and their new low-level jobs in civil ministries. Moreover, the Los Angeles Times reports that many Awakening leaders have recently been arrested for crimes they allegedly committed when they were insurgents, and that other Awakening members have been assassinated.

The Christian Science Monitor cites numerous examples of such assassinations: In December, two roadside bombs in December killed two Awakening commanders; in March, men broke into the house of a Awakening militiaman, shooting him and his wife; in June, an Awakening member’s house was blown up on the outskirts of Fallujah; last month, gunmen raided the home of a man who belonged to a tribe that has been vocal in its anti-Al Qaeda views, killing five of his family members; and just last week, an Awakening leader was brutally slain along with his wife and children in his South Baghdad home. There have also been frequent attacks of police officers, which have had their houses blown up and have witnessed family members being killed by gunmen.

Many Awakening members describe themselves as caught between radicals seeking revenge against them, and a government that appears just as likely to arrest them as give them their paychecks. Senior tribal leader, Sheik Ali Hatem Sulaiman, who is associated with the Awakening movement, said on Al Arabiya television, “The sons of the Awakening are paying with their blood . . . We haven’t seen the government, politicians or the Americans finding a solution to this problem.”

For more information, please see:

Al Arabiya News Channel – Iraq Suicide Bomber Kills 43 at Army Office – 19 July 2010

Al Jazeera – Suicide Bombers Target Iraq Militia – 19 June 2010

Christian Science Monitor – Iraq Suicide Attacks Target Sunni Awakening Militias; Dozens Killed – 19 July 2010

Christian Science Monitor – Sunni Awakening Resolute in Face of Iraq Bombing – 19 July 2010

Los Angeles Times – 50 Killed in Iraq Attacks Aimed at Anti-Al Qaeda Fighters – 19 July 2010

New York Times – Dozens Killed in Iraq Suicide Attacks – 19 July 2010