Omar Qassis: Administrative Detainee

The case of Palestinian prisoners held in administrative detention in Israeli prisons is a particularly horrible side of Israeli oppression. Of the roughly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, there are over a thousand languishing without charge, without a release date, without access to any evidence held against them.

Administrative detention is a system of incarceration without charge, where secret evidence from the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) is shown to the military judge and used to justify incarceration for a period up to six months, on a renewable basis. The information provided by the GSS is not communicated to the detainee or to his/her lawyer. The mental suffering caused by not knowing the grounds for detention can amount to torture as defined under the UN Convention Against Torture and such lengthy detentions without charge or trial also constitute "arbitrary detention" which are a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 9[1]) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 9).

For the Zionuts about to trip over their panties in the rush to justify this practice, note the part where the detainees are held without charge. As in, they have not been charged with any crime. As in, many of these prisoners serve many years at a time under administrative detention without ever being accused of anything.


10 students from Birzeit University currently languish under administrative detention in Israel, among them the former head of the student council, Fadi Hamad, and his deputy, Abdallah Oweis.Also amongst them is Omar Qassis. Omar has been detained since March 17, 2008. He was taken from his home in the mostly Christian village of Birzeit where he lived with his mother and older brother Hanna, and has spent his time in incarceration between the Mascobia Detention Center in West Jerusalem, notorious in Palestinian society for its harsh interrogation methods that frequently include torture, the Naqab Prison in the middle of the Naqab desert, notorious for its inhumane detention conditions (prisoners are kept in tents in the desert), and Ofer military court near Ramallah. Throughout his detention, the Israeli occupation and its intelligence services failed to charge Omar with any crime. On May 1st, a month and a half after his arrest, he was placed under administrative detention for three months. He was also charged with throwing stones sometime between 2001 and 2002. He pled not guilty.

The ridiculousness of the charge is breathtaking, but within the maze of Israeli oppression, hardly unique. Note also the fact that Omar is being accused of throwing stones when he was 16 years old, a minor, yet is being tried in a military court as an adult. Several months after his detention, his family have yet to receive permission from the occupying forces to visit him.

I know Omar and Hanna personally. We all worked together at a local newspaper a couple of years ago, and Omar was due to graduate with me last week. He will now have to wait until he is freed. Omar is an unbelievably hyperactive dude, always ready with a quip or a quote one of the many varied thinkers he has read. I missed seeing his lanky body bouncing up and down at campus handing out flyers around student union election time, or volunteering his time to guide foreign delegations around the school. But it doesn’t matter what kind of person he is-what matters is that he is being held without charge (or a pathetic, trumped up charge if you choose to count throwing stones 7 years ago) , under deplorable conditions, with no idea of when he will be let free.

A detailed account of Omar's ongoing ordeal.