On 3 October 2022, Adalah and attorney Khaled Zabarqa filed a motion to the Supreme Court demanding to overturn a lower court’s decision denying the early release of Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian youth who was arrested for attempted murder in 2015, at the age of 13, and who was held for lengthy periods in solitary confinement. Despite his deteriorating mental health condition, which requires, according to doctors, medical aid outside of prison, the District Court upheld a parole committee’s decision to deny him early release.
An amendment to the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law allowed the parole committee to determine retroactively that Ahmad’s actions, even as a minor, constituted a “terror act”, and therefore made him ineligible for early release.
Adalah Attorneys Nareman Shehadeh-Zoabi and Adi Mansour, the legal representatives of Ahmad commented that: “This case clearly illustrates why sweeping, blanket sentencing ignores an individual’s particular circumstances and contradicts the most basic principles of justice. The Counter-Terrorism Law has proven to be one of the most dangerous tools available to Israeli authorities. It has enabled them to create a separate, draconian legal mechanism that is applied only to Palestinians, even before civilian courts.” |
