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'No Justice Under Occupation:' Ahed Tamimi Sentenced to 8 Months Under Plea Bargain

  • Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi enters a military courtroom at Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, January 15, 2018.

    Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi enters a military courtroom at Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, January 15, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

Published 21 March 2018
Opinion

Tamimi was arrested in December after a video showing her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral.

Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman were sentenced to eight months in prison and a US$1,500 fine as their legal team accepted a plea bargain with military prosecution on Wednesday.

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Ahed and her mother were sentenced in separate trials at the Ofer military camp near Ramallah, with no media or social organizations allowed in. Tamimi's defense team had demanded a public trial, but the military court rejected the appeal.

The plea reduced 17-year-old Palestinian teenager's charges to four counts of assault, leaving out other charges such as stone-throwing.

"At the end of the first session of the hearing Ahed said 'there is no justice under occupation,'" Mariam Barghouti tweeted.

The original indictment included charges going back to 2016, such as assaulting and threatening a soldier, disrupting a soldier and inciting and throwing objects at a person or property.

"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," Tamimi's lawyer Gaby Lasky said, confirming an agreement had been reached.

An anonymous source told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the military court felt the need to end the legal case that was bringing a lot of negative attention from the media and social organizations, damaging the army's reputation.

Tamimi was arrested in December after a video that showed her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral. She has been in administrative detention since then on 12 different charges, including aggravated assault.

Other members of the Tamimi family are also facing charges for opposing the Israeli occupation. Nariman Tamimi, Ahed's mother, was charged for “incitement” on social media after she uploaded the video showing Ahed and her cousin Nur slapping the Israeli soldiers.

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Nur said they decided to confront the occupying military after finding out that their 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head. Mohammed went into a four day coma and underwent two surgeries to remove a rubber-coated steel bullet from the back of his brain.

Only a day after his release from his original detention, Major General Yoav Mordechai, Israel's coordinator of government activities in the territories, posted an official Facebook post saying that Mohammed had confessed he had self inflicted his wounds when he fell off his bicycle.

Mohammed was arrested again on Feb. 26 during a night raid.

Nariman Tamimi's trial took place just before Ahed's this Wednesday. In it, an Israeli activist reportedly slapped the prosecutor and said “who are you to judge her?”

The judge approved Nariman's plea bargain for an eight month sentence including a fine and a three year suspended sentence. Nur also got a plea deal for time served, a fine and a suspended sentence.

A total of 10 members of the Tamimi family have been arrested for their struggle against the Israeli occupation.

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