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March 22nd, 2018 
Awake Goy Ahed Tamimi Agrees To Eight Month Plea Bargain In Military Court
Above: Ahed Tamimi in military court. By Oren Ziv Activestills.
Note: Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager, has agreed to plead guilty to four of the 12 charges she faced, including assault. She has received an eight month sentence and a three year suspended sentence. In addition, she will also pay a fine of 5,000 shekels ($1,440) and a three year suspended sentence. Her mother also received an eight month sentence for uploading the video.
Ahed and her mother were sentenced in separate trials at the Ofer military camp near Ramallah, with no media or social organizations allowed in the courtroom. Ahed’s defense team had demanded a public trial, but the military court rejected the appeal.
Among the charges dropped were those that required her to be incarcerated pending trial. Ahed’s lawyer Gaby Lasky said”The fact that the plea agreement provides for the dropping of all of counts of indictment that made her detention possible until the end of legal proceedings possible is proof that Tamimi’s arrest in the middle of the night, and that the legal proceedings against her were steps designed to settle scores.”
At the end of her first court sesson Ahed said “there is no justice under occupation.”
Today 17 year old Ahed Tamimi will get 8 months in prison for slapping a heavily armed soldier of an occupying army who came to her house.
Also today, an Israeli court let a man that participated in a murderous lynch of an African asylum seeker off with community service.
— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) March 21, 2018
“There is no justice under occupation”
What 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi said when asked how she felt about her sentencing during her trial today. pic.twitter.com/sX4NtsX4Z7— JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) March 21, 2018
WATCH: This is how 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi responded when asked how she felt about her sentencing during her trial today. She and her mother Nariman were both sentenced to 8 months in Israeli prison. Her cousin Nour was sentenced to 5 months. pic.twitter.com/4F8rR5Y1P0
— The IMEU (@theIMEU) March 21, 2018
Outrageous: Child activist Ahed Tamimi has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Yet again, the authorities in #Israel have confirmed that they have no regard whatsoever for the rights of Palestinian children. https://t.co/MNdWEJHorA
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) March 21, 2018
The military prosecution today erased 8 of the 12 counts in Ahed Tamimi’s indictment, including all charges of stone throwing and incitement to terror. Since the occupation’s legal system doesn’t provide justice we reached a plea of 8 months which is a considerable achievement.
— Gaby Lasky (@gaby_lasky) March 21, 2018
The conviction rate in Israel’s military courts in the West Bank is almost 100% – not because the military prosecution is so efficient, but because Palestinian defendants reluctantly sign plea bargains in which they plead guilty. A new report published yesterday by B’Tselem shows how the measures that Israel has showcased over the last decade as examples of its improved treatment of Palestinian minors in military courts have little to do with the protection of minors and everything to do with public relations. In fact, the function of the military juvenile court boils down to signing off on plea bargains such as the one signed today.
This afternoon, the military court at Ofer signed off on plea bargains for ‘Ahed and Nariman Tamimi. The plea bargains include eight months in prison and a fine. A new report published yesterday by B’Tselem, Minors in Jeopardy: Violation of the Rights of Palestinian Minors by Israel’s Military Courts, analyzes the changes that Israel declared over the last decade with regard to the treatment of Palestinian minors in military courts. The report reveals that while useful in Israeli propaganda, these technical changes have done nothing to improve the protection of minors’ rights.
In particular, the role of the Military Juvenile Court, whose establishment Israel views as a landmark achievement in the protection of minors’ rights in the military court system, is primarily to sign off on plea bargains already reached between the defense and the prosecution outside the courtroom. Almost all minors sign the plea bargains, having been left little choice by the military courts’ detention policy: most minors are held in custody from the time of their arrest and until they finish serving their sentence. Carrying out an evidentiary trial from within prison is fraught with difficulties, and the defendants know that if convicted, they will be sentenced to prison anyway, as no alternatives exist. Even in the extremely unlikely case that they are acquitted, the time they spent in custody throughout the trial may be just as long, or even longer, than the time they will spend in prison under a plea bargain.
‘Ahed Tamimi’s case is exceptional only in that it garnered special media attention, but it is essentially no different from hundreds of such cases every year. According to figures the Israel Prison Service (IPS) provided to B’Tselem, on 28 February 2018 the IPS had 356 Palestinian minors in custody: 95 of them were serving a prison sentence, 257 were in pre- or post-indictment detention, and four were being held in administrative detention. While Israel claims to hold dear the rights of the Palestinian minors it arrests and puts on trial, the opposite is true: the rights of these minors are routinely and systemically abused from the moment of their arrest.
Source Article from https://popularresistance.org/ahed-tamimi-agrees-to-eight-month-plea-bargain-in-military-court/
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