Rally for repeal of death penalty/Palestinian activist to get prize by video

Death row prisoners’ familes, former death row prisoners, and anti-death penalty activists demonstrate in favor of House repeal of death penalty

Concerns over racial bias, fairness drive local protest against Senate death penalty compromise bill

What:  Rally & march to end Maryland’s Death Penalty
Where:  401 E. Madison Ave., Baltimore (death row)
When:  Saturday, March 14^th at 1 PM
Who:  Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Baltimore Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, CASA de Maryland, Washington Peace Center, International Socialist Organization, and others.

 

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Palestinian activist to get prize by video

By BEN HUBBARD
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 11, 2009; 2:29 PM

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The head of a leading Palestinian human rights group, facing an Israeli travel ban, prepared Wednesday to accept a major Dutch prize by video conference from his West Bank office.

Shawan Jabarin, director of the al-Haq organization, had hoped to travel to the Netherlands to accept the "Geuzenpenning Prize" on behalf of his organization, but the Israeli Supreme Court this week upheld a travel ban on him, citing security concerns.

Jabarin said the charges were politically motivated, targeting him for his work documenting Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank. He said the ruling was based on secret evidence presented to the judge while everyone else _ including Jabarin and his lawyer _ had to wait outside.

Court documents show that Jabarin was convicted by an Israeli court in 1985 of activity on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a tiny PLO faction considered a terror group by Israel. He served nine months in prison.

He was detained without trial in 1994 on charges he remained active in the group, according to court documents.

In its ruling Tuesday, the court quoted a 2007 decision that Jabarin "has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence, part of the time managing a rights group and another part of the time taking part in a terror group that does not flinch from acts of murder and attempted murder."

In an interview Wednesday, Jabarin said he had joined a PFLP student group for "a few months" in the early 1980s while a student at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University. He said he threw stones as a teenager but never participated in other violence against Israel.

Jabarin said his problems with Israeli security started in 1979, when he testified against Jewish settlers he said he saw shoot and kill a Palestinian student. He was arrested and interrogated the same day, he said, and prevented later that year from traveling to Romania, where he had received a scholarship to study medicine.

Jabarin said he has been arrested dozens of times since and often banned from traveling. He received a law degree in Ireland in 2005, but has been unable to travel since becoming the head of al-Haq in 2006.

The latest decision came despite an appeal by Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to his Israeli counterpart last week to let Jabarin travel.

Verhagen called the decision "disappointing and worrying."

Previous winners of the Geuzenpenning Prize include watchdog groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

© 2009 The Associated Press

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs