France: Investigation opened for torture of French-Palestinian lawyer repeatedly detained in Israel

Since mid-July, an investigation has been opened in France into the arbitrary detention and suspected torture attributed to the Israeli authorities by the French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, arrested several times and detained for years in the prisons of the Jewish state. The news was confirmed today from a source close to the case to the press agency AFPto which the Israeli prison authority refused to respond. The 39-year-old lawyer had filed a complaint in France at the end of March, describing in particular the conditions of his detention and recalling the expulsion ordered by Tel Aviv in 2022.

Although the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has established that “the conditions of detention described, assuming they are proven, do not appear to satisfy the criteria for the crime” of torture, according to AFPthe investigating judge – who has the final say on the case – has decided to continue investigating. “The reality of the ill-treatment suffered and reported is plausible and the reported facts most likely constitute crimes of torture,” reads an order signed on July 17, cited by the French agency. The investigating judge hypothesizes the crimes of “torture, acts of barbarity and arbitrary detention by a person holding public powers” and will have the “aim of ascertaining whether or not such crimes are qualified”.

“Israel’s lack of cooperation will not prevent, if necessary, the investigation and prosecution of the defendants,” assured Hamouri’s lawyers, William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, who said their client had been “subjected to repeated arbitrary detention and suffered acts of torture during these deprivations of liberty.” According to his lawyers, the “tortures” suffered by the complainant included: his transfer – which took place in July 2022 – to a new detention location, where he was deprived of food and sleep; “punitive isolation” following a hunger strike; and “prolonged restriction or even denial of contact with his family”.

Arrested and imprisoned in 2005, three years later Salah Hamouri was sentenced by an Israeli court to seven years in prison for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Ovadia Yossef, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and founder of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas. The French-Palestinian lawyer, who has always maintained his innocence in this case, was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap that permit the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Subsequently, according to Hamouri’s lawyers, the 39-year-old suffered several other “arrests and detentions” until 2018. Between March and December 2022, the lawyer was then subjected to administrative detention “without any official charge” until the end of that same year he was forced by Israel into “forced exile” in France, which the authorities in Paris defined as “contrary to the law” while for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights it was a real “war crime”.

For its part, Israel suspects Hamouri of links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization considered terrorist by both Israel and the European Union, an accusation that the French-Palestinian lawyer has always denied.