PA
Documents Detail Payments to Terrorists
IPT News
January 15, 2015
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NEW YORK –
Official Palestinian Authority policy provides monthly payments for
convicted terrorists held in Israeli jails. The longer the sentence, the
more the terrorist's family receives.
A jury saw the document outlining that policy Thursday during
testimony in a $1 billion civil trial brought by American victims of terrorist attacks in
Israel between 2002 and 2004. The attacks were carried out by branches of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Palestinian Authority (PA),
their employees or others who received assistance from the groups.
Alon Eviatar, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Defense
Forces, told jurors that the PA, PLO, Fatah and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigade are all part of the same hierarchy. Fatah members dominate PA
employee rosters, he said.
That information goes to the heart of the case.
When the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade committed terrorist attacks, or when PA employees
participated directly in other attacks, they were advancing the defendants'
policy of supporting "the struggle against the occupation."
The lawsuit, Sokolow v. PLO, was brought under the
Anti-Terrorism Act. Attorneys for the Palestinian Authority deny there was
any systematic program to enable and support the terrorist attacks. They
say the attacks were the actions of individuals and the PA and PLO should
not be held liable.
To support Eviatar's testimony, jurors saw official Palestinian
Authority documents and emblems which list the PLO's name just above the
PA's, indicating they are the same body.
When he was alive, PA President Yasser Arafat controlled them all. He
also was the PLO's longtime chairman and created Fatah in 1959, Eviatar
said. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is Fatah's military branch. Jurors also
saw repeated examples of Palestinian Authority money being routed to Fatah
branches throughout the West Bank between 2000 and 2003.
Eviatar spent most of his 22-year military career in intelligence
focused on the Palestinian territories. He described the law and
regulations detailing financial support for terrorists in Israeli prisons
as "one of the most significant elements of Palestinian
government" in maintaining public support.
According to the 2004 regulation, prisoners serving up to five years in
Israeli prisons receive 1,300 shekels per month. Wives of married
inmates receive another 300 shekels, and an additional 50 shekels a month
is sent for each child in the family. After five years, the payments
increase to 2,000 shekels. Inmates in prison longer than 25 years are paid 4,000 shekels.
In addition, convicted terrorists who were PA employees continue to draw
their salaries and benefit from promotions even though they are behind
bars. For example, jurors saw that Majed Al-Masri was promoted from major
in the Palestinian Security Forces to colonel in 2010. By then, he had been
in prison for five years for his role in an Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade
terrorist shooting attack in 2002 that killed two women.
Eviatar's testimony continues Friday. Brian Hill, an attorney for the
PLO and PA, indicated outside the jury's presence that Eviatar's cross
examination will point out that the prisoner financing policy was not yet
in effect in 2002, when most of the attacks in the lawsuit took place.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels rejected a
defense motion for a mistrial after Kent Yalowitz, attorney for the
victims, read excerpts from an addition to the Oslo Accords, the
U.S.-brokered agreement between Israel and the PLO that led to the
Palestinian Authority's creation. The excerpts called on both the Israelis
and Palestinians to aggressively police against terrorism and other
violence and to cooperate with each other on security.
That includes arresting people plotting attacks and communicating with
each other about such plots.
Evidence already before the jury shows Palestinian security officials
were involved in several of the attacks at issue and that a key Hamas bomb
maker was released by Palestinian police who originally arrested him for
plotting a terrorist attack. That Hamas terrorist "went on a killing
spree," Yalowitz said in his opening statement, building bombs that
killed 66 people.
Reading from the Oslo document improperly injected politics into the
trial, defense attorney Mark Rochon argued. Both parties promised not to do
that, and the prejudicial effect on jurors was cause for a mistrial.
Daniels rejected the defense's argument, noting that the document itself
was admitted into evidence without objection. Once that happened, Yalowitz
"can do what he wants with it."
Related Topics: , Sokolow
v. PLO, Palestinian
Authority, Kent
Yalowitz, Yasser
Arafat, Anti-Terrorism
Act, Fatah,
Al-Aqsa
Martyrs' Brigade, IDF,
Alon
Eviatar, Majed
Al-Masri, Judge
George B. Daniels, Oslo
Accords, Brian
Hill, Mark
Rochon
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