Arab-Palestinian journalist in Israel held incommunicado

Majd Kayyal, 23, a journalist from Haifa who also works as editor for civil rights center Adalah, has been detained and under interrogation since Saturday night. The gag order was lifted after activists in Israel and abroad ignored the ban. The Haifa District Court on Thursday morning agreed to lift a gag order imposed on the arrest of Majd Kayyal, a 23-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel and a journalist from Haifa, who was arrested as he was traveling home from Beirut last Saturday night. According to police prosecutors who applied for an extension of his remand on Sunday morning, Kayyal is suspected “of visiting an enemy state and establishing contact with foreign agents.” While it is illegal for Israeli citizens to visit “enemy states” such as Lebanon and Syria, many Israeli journalists do so on a regular basis, some by making use of their dual citizenship and some by simply crossing the border. None of them were formally arrested or charged in recent memory. Kayyal’s remand was extended until April 22.

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The journalist, who made no secret of his visit and posted reflections about it on Jadaliyya while still abroad, was not allowed access to legal counsel since his arrest until Wednesday night, hours before the gag order was to be lifted. The state alleged fears that the interrogation would be compromised should he and his lawyers be allowed to meet – a tactic applied frequently to Palestinians appearing before Israeli military courts in the occupied territories, occasionally to Palestinian citizens of Israel, and almost never to Jewish citizens. Even Kayyal’s solitary court appearance at the remand hearing took place only after his legal team was ordered to leave the room.

Kayyal told his lawyers that the questioning so far focused on his visit to Beirut and the meetings he held during the conference. He said he answered all the questions, and explained all of them were held in his capacity as a journalist, according to Adalah. He was checked on a lie detector and found to be speaking the truth, the rights group said.

According to his lawyers, Kayyal has been held in solitary confinement, without a bed, a window, daylight or fresh air, and with an electrical light on 24 hours a day, a tactic used to make detainees lose their sense of time. The questioning was aggressive, he said, and included many questions about his private life. The Adalah legal team said they nevertheless found him to be in good spirits, and are planning to ask the court to reexamine the extension of his remand.

On Wednesday, while still under a gag order, Adalah posted reflections on its Facebook page about the denial of right to counsel, stressing in particular the risk of torture. “Meeting a lawyer before and during questioning is a constitutional right, requisite for protecting the right of the detainee for due process,” the organization wrote.

A sweeping gag order was imposed by the Haifa Magistrate’s Court on the entire affair, simultaneously with the extension of Kayyal’s remand – an increasingly standard practice by state agencies who do not have a case for applying Israel’s military censorship laws and resort to lowest-instances courts to rubber-stamp injunctions..

The trend began with Adalah’s own Facebook page, which posted the fact of Kayyal’s arrest immediately after it took place and before the imposition of the gag order the following morning, prompting breaking news coverage on the site of the Communist Party of Israel in Hebrew. Al-Ittihad, the Haifa-based printed daily newspaper of the Communist Party, went even further, printing news about the arrest during the week. So far, no known steps have been taken against any of the publications, but many other media outlets held back – mainstream media in line with its habitual kowtowing of the security services line, and independent media for lack of financial resources to withstand a lengthy court case – even if they would be acquitted at the end.

Related in English:

http://adalah.org/eng/Articles/2266/Gag-order-lifted-on-case-of-arrest-of-journalist-on-5

Related in Arabic:

http://www.aljabha.org/index.asp?i=84008

Related in Hebrew:

http://maki.org.il/%D7%A0%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%90%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%92%D7%93-%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%A2%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%91%D7%95-%D7%9E%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%9F/