More jail terms for Gaza protesters
Min Donny | 27.03.2010 14:16 | Palestine | Repression | Social Struggles
26th March 2010 – Lizzie Cocker in Isleworth
Police hide video evidence from defence lawyers.
Two more youngsters charged with violent disorder during last year’s protests against Israel’s two-week massacre of the Gazan people have been handed harsh jail terms.
Police hide video evidence from defence lawyers.
Two more youngsters charged with violent disorder during last year’s protests against Israel’s two-week massacre of the Gazan people have been handed harsh jail terms.
Judge Denniss at Isleworth Crown Court sentenced Scott McPherson to two years and Yahia Tebani to 12 months.
Ibrahim Obeseyah received a 12-month suspended sentence and 150 hours unpaid work.
Four other hearings also took place with two cases being adjourned until late April. The verdict of the others had not been confirmed as the Star went to press.
Protesters gathered inside and outside the court to show solidarity with the families of the defendants.
The defendants’ families stressed that, despite the abundance of CCTV footage, the police brutality which provoked the reaction of protesters had been ignored when the sentences were handed out.
Mr McPherson has been forced to leave his five-month-old son and, like Mr Tebani, is unable to continue with his university studies.
His mother Linda McPherson said: “He was demonstrating at the Israeli embassy standing up for the people of Gaza and the police were antagonistic and violent.
“A year later he was out shopping and undercover police came from all directions and pounced on him and then arrested him.
“Regardless of what this country says, you have not got freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate and protest against what’s happening in other parts of the world.”
Mr Tebani was 17 at the time he was captured on CCTV throwing a stick in the direction of police guarding the embassy.
His brother Hamza said: “We have lost faith in the law, this is how I feel.
“Nobody mentioned anything about why he took a stick and waved it. No-one spoke about injured people being refused through police lines to get to the ambulance.”
One-hundred-and-nineteen predominantly young Muslims were arrested after the protests. Seventy-nine have since been charged and so far 24 have been sent to prison. The sentencing of the remaining defendants continues.
The British Muslim Initiative has instructed a lawyer to take the cases to appeal.
President Mohamad Sawalha said: “They are damaging the idea of cohesion. The Muslim community is really feeling very angry against these charges because it’s not acceptable that a young Muslim or non-Muslim who just threw an empty bottle at the police is sentenced to two years.”
www.gazademosupport.org.uk
Ibrahim Obeseyah received a 12-month suspended sentence and 150 hours unpaid work.
Four other hearings also took place with two cases being adjourned until late April. The verdict of the others had not been confirmed as the Star went to press.
Protesters gathered inside and outside the court to show solidarity with the families of the defendants.
The defendants’ families stressed that, despite the abundance of CCTV footage, the police brutality which provoked the reaction of protesters had been ignored when the sentences were handed out.
Mr McPherson has been forced to leave his five-month-old son and, like Mr Tebani, is unable to continue with his university studies.
His mother Linda McPherson said: “He was demonstrating at the Israeli embassy standing up for the people of Gaza and the police were antagonistic and violent.
“A year later he was out shopping and undercover police came from all directions and pounced on him and then arrested him.
“Regardless of what this country says, you have not got freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate and protest against what’s happening in other parts of the world.”
Mr Tebani was 17 at the time he was captured on CCTV throwing a stick in the direction of police guarding the embassy.
His brother Hamza said: “We have lost faith in the law, this is how I feel.
“Nobody mentioned anything about why he took a stick and waved it. No-one spoke about injured people being refused through police lines to get to the ambulance.”
One-hundred-and-nineteen predominantly young Muslims were arrested after the protests. Seventy-nine have since been charged and so far 24 have been sent to prison. The sentencing of the remaining defendants continues.
The British Muslim Initiative has instructed a lawyer to take the cases to appeal.
President Mohamad Sawalha said: “They are damaging the idea of cohesion. The Muslim community is really feeling very angry against these charges because it’s not acceptable that a young Muslim or non-Muslim who just threw an empty bottle at the police is sentenced to two years.”
www.gazademosupport.org.uk
Min Donny
Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
this is just the beginning
27.03.2010 15:48
fightback
thank you for informing us, an important warning to those with a conscience
27.03.2010 17:26
another
Not accurate
27.03.2010 20:23
It's not fair, it ain't right that they got these punishments,
the sticks we're talking about weren't broomsticks, they are about the thickness of a pencil!
I was there, I saw the police attacking us, I saw the police pushing everyone away from the gates to the otherside, we we're squeezed onto one another and it was only a matter of time before something like that was going to happen, people we're angry, very angry, and the cops were being very very provokative. and you know what else:
If it weren't for them we could of stopped the Gaze raids, we had enough people to storm the embassy, and on this one occasion we had an ability to stop a genocide, if it weren't for the police a lot more people would of been alive in Gaza today!
So a shop window was smashed, big fucking deal, we're talking about the deaths of our brothers and sisters and fellow human beings.
The moral thing for the police to do in that time, was obviously to help us, but they chose to protect the embassy, they are complicit, and not a single army officer, not a single politician or solider is going to go down to prison, for the much more serious crime of a massacre, so with all due respect to fucking Starbucks and the fucking cops, who gives a shit?
a Jew
@a jew
27.03.2010 20:55
Do you actually believe the Israels would let a mob take over their embassy without using every bit of firepower they had? It would have been a massacre
Mccoy
Pissed off with intent
28.03.2010 02:48
Peters Atlas
interesting times ahead on the inside
28.03.2010 08:15
remember strangeways, remember the maze, remember how the 80's included a politicised and militant attitude spreading throughout prisons? educating each other, sharing support and resources working together.
what goes around comes around.
a handful of lifers have kept that flame alive, but its been faltering these last 20 years due to lack of numbers. those numbers are now heading our way thanks to the authoritarians in charge.
what isn't happening outside the prisons to any real degree - concerted communication, bonding, and solidarity between various strands of opposition to the state (muslim youth, anarchists, greens, and the rare few who are all three, just for some examples) - is highly likely to happen now on the inside now that we are to be sharing cells and exercise yards.
wonder how the state will try to counter it this time?
expect it will involve extra-repressive measures against individual prisoners, and hope that those of us on the outside are prepared and ready to support them as much as we possibly can.
ex-prisoner
@Peters Atlas
28.03.2010 10:08
What is missing from this is the fact that many of these charges stem from reactions to the violence of the cops.
"The judge admitted in his summing-up of each of the cases that MEMO sat through that none of the young men had set out deliberately to cause any trouble and he accepted that none of the misconduct had been premeditated. He made reference to the fact that no weapons had been brought from home and that no disguises, such as balaclavas, had been worn and that essentially they had all just got caught up in the events of the day. He made the point that there seemed to be a type of "mass-hysteria" afflicting the crowd and that the protesters simply got caught up in the events"
Yet despite this, he saw fit to use a tariff of sentencing devised by the Judges in the Bradford Riots.
We have already learnt that Jake Smith reacted after he was beaten by the cops, who then tried to suppress the evidence of his beating.
It was precisely because most of the young defendants have no history of attending protests and seeing how the cops routinely behave, that they find themselves in the dock. Had they more experience, they may well have been able to get a better defence than the old line of "its on video you might as well plead guilty to avoid a harsh sentence". The police provocation that played a major part in setting off many of the incidents was not taken into account.
viva viva Falestina!
I got a small fine for a similar offence in the 90s
28.03.2010 18:33
It does make you wonder why they are handing out such draconian sentences in this case.
anon
great job
29.03.2010 17:17
paulo