Paul Martin, detained nearly 30 days ago at the Gaza City courthouse when he was there to testify on behalf of a Palestinian member of a militant group who is charged with collaboration with Israel, was released today without having been charged.
Hamas said they released Martin to make us happy. We are happy.
That is, happy that he is released — but not that he was detained in the first place.
Martin is the only international detained by Hamas since their rout of Fatah/Preventive Security Forces in Gaza in mid-June 2007.
Hamas said that he was being “deported” as a persona non grata.
The Foreign Press Association in Israel issued a statement welcoming his release, and saying that “Journalists should be able to continue doing their professional job in Gaza and or any other place, without having the threat of being arrested”.
The International Press Institute expressed concern about “the circumstances of his arrest and detention”, the fact that no charges against him were made public, and the fact that his court hearings were held behind closed doors.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said that there had been “serious security issues” regarding Martin, according to a report by Ma’an News Agency.
Martin, who was detained on 14 February, had his detention extended on 1 March. He said to journalists gathered to see him when he arrived in Israel’s via the Erez terminal crossing to Gaza said: “I’ve been through a lot in the past few days and weeks”.
UPDATE: Human Rights Watch has sent out an message on Friday saying that Martin’s detention “seriously violated his due process rights”. The Human Rights message also added a lot of interesting detail that was unavailable previously. It said that “Martin’s lawyer, Sharhabeel al-Zaeem, said that Hamas military prosecutors prevented him from seeing his client from February 19 to March 1 or from speaking privately with Martin at any point during his detention. At no time was Martin brought before a judge for an independent hearing on his detention. ‘We are relieved at Martin’s release, but we are also concerned that Hamas has produced no evidence to justify his detention’, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. ‘That a high profile, foreign journalist can suffer such unfair detention makes me wonder about the rights of lower-profile, Palestinian detainees caught in Hamas’s military court system’. Hamas authorities informed al-Zaeem on February 16 that they had ordered Martin’s detention on the suspicion that he was an enemy spy and had recruited others to spy – charges that carry the death penalty. The Hamas authorities failed to charge him with any crime during his detention, however, and did not present Martin or his lawyer with any evidence of reasonable grounds to justify his arrest. A Hamas official stated upon Martin’s release that Martin ‘tried to recruit a large number of translators and drivers to work for him’ and investigated smuggling tunnels beneath Gaza’s border with Egypt. Neither of those activities is prohibited by the penal laws applied in Gaza. Martin says he went to Gaza in an attempt to testify on behalf of a detained former militant charged with spying and collaboration.
His arrest may send a chilling message to persons who might otherwise testify on behalf of defendants in trials conducted by the Hamas military judiciary, harming the chances of defendants to receive fair trials”…
If I had been asked to draft the FPA statement, I would have written it differently…
Of course Israeli journalists should be allowed to cover Gaza. It has gradually become clear that the legal basis for this particular prohibition is a Israeli administrative decision put into place after Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza — after which it Israel forbade Israelis to be in Gaza.
This administrative decision is apparently the legal basis for the two arrests of Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist working for Haaretz and living in Ramallah (after previously living in Gaza), who been back to Gaza three times over the past two years. However, she was arrested upon her return to Israel twice — the first time when Hamas considerately deported her via Erez terminal out of a stated concern for her safety, despite the fact that she had intended to depart via a Free Gaza return by sea to Cyprus, and then fly back to Ben Gurion Airport, which would have spared her from that arrest. Her second arrest was also when she departed from Erez. (She returned to Gaza around New Year’s Day. via Rafah, with international activists, and she left via Rafah — Israel has put in place another administrative decision about a year ago forbidding anybody who enters Gaza from Rafah, from leaving Gaza via Erez terminal to Israel.)
There are two other Israelis — who are not journalists — who went to Gaza. One was arrested, one was not, and here^’s the apparent reason why:
Israeli + American activist Jeff Halper, head of ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition visited Gaza by sailing in the first Free Gaza expedition from Cyprus, then left via Erez, and he was arrested too. He later said that his jail time in Israel was far more scary than any of his experiences inside Gaza. After spending more than a day in jail, he was asked to post a small bond, and has never been asked to appear in court.
ISM activist Huweida Arraf, who has Israeli citizenship, was an organizer and participant in the first Free Gaza expedition. She sailed back to Cyprus by ship, then flew into Ben Gurion, without any problem…