Palestine: a 12-year-old girl sentenced to 4.5 months in prison by an Israeli court

On 18 February 2016, 12-year-old student Dima Al-Wawi was sentenced by the Israeli Ofer Court to four and a half months in prison and a fine of 8,000 Shekel (US$ 2,000) for "carrying a knife in her backpack, attempting to kill Israeli settlers and threatening Israel's security." She is currently detained in a prison for women together with other juvenile prisoners and her family is not allowed to visit her. Concerned over these facts, on 29 February 2016, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (SR OPT), Makarim Wibisono, asking him to call upon the Israeli authorities to immediately release Dima. As she does not have access to education in prison, Alkarama also sent a letter to the Office of International Standards and Legal Affairs of UNESCO, which examines communications relating to the violation of the right to education committed by any Member State of UNESCO.

On 9 February 2016, at 8:30am, Dima was walking to her school, called "Martyrs of Halhul", in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, when she was stopped by an Israeli settler at the Sarmi Tsur settlement. The settler called the Israeli Police, following which police officers came and arrested her. She was then interrogated by the Israeli Police without the presence of a lawyer or a family member before being taken to the Sharon Prison for women, where she was kept in solitary confinement for a day.

After three hearings that took place between 10 and 14 February, the Ofer Court sentenced her to four and a half months in prison for "carrying a knife," which, according to the court, would have been used to kill Israeli settlers. On 21 February 2016, the Court of Appeal issued a decision determining that Dima could serve her sentence in a "safe house" instead of in prison under the condition that her family would pay a fee of 25,000 shekels (US$ 6,400), which they cannot afford. As a consequence, Dima is now detained in the Sharon prison, where she is denied family visit and access to her lawyer, who was only allowed to speak to her in court.

Dima's case illustrates the widespread, systematic and institutionalised imprisonment of Palestinian children by the Israeli authorities, a pattern which was previously denounced by Alkarama in the cases of Amer Bajawi and Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman. "The arbitrary arrest of Palestinian children and their treatment in detention – being denied access to their families, to a lawyer and to education – are a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Israel is a party," says Inès Osman, Alkarama's Legal Coordinator. "We, therefore, urge the Israeli authorities to stop this practice immediately and respect its international obligations."

For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).