Gisler eller ikke, den juridiske prosessen fremstår svært betenkelig, om ikke illegitim.
[...] The decision to place a Palestinian in administrative detention is made by the regional military commander – without indictment or trial.
Under the military law that applies in the West Bank, a person can be administratively detained for six months.
However, the order can be extended indefinitely, so the detention is effectively unlimited and detainees never know when they will be released.
Individuals held in administrative detention must be brought before a military judge within eight days – either of the original detention order or of its extension.
The judge may uphold the order, reject it, or shorten the period of detention stipulated in it. The decision may be appealed to the Military Court of Appeals or the subject of a High Court petition.
However, the judicial review is largely a façade. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the judges accept the ISA’s claim regarding the “security risk” that justifies the detainee’s immediate incarceration.
As the evidence for the claim is not disclosed to the detainee and his counsel, he never knows the reason for the detention and cannot challenge the allegations supposedly made against him.
In some cases, the judges request to see the classified material; in others, they do not review it or make any attempt to examine the information that led to the detention.
In any case, the fact that the detainee cannot address this information empties the judicial process of any meaning.
The major problem with the judicial review is the court’s working assumption that administrative detention is a lawful measure. The judges only question how this power is implemented: did the military commander apply reasonable discretion in the case before them?
At no point do they examine the legality of the measure itself.
In doing so, the judges completely ignore the fact that Israel’s use of administrative detention renders it unlawful.
In violation of the restrictions placed by international law, Israel makes routine, extensive use of administrative detention. Over the years, it has placed thousands of Palestinians behind bars without charging them, without telling them what they are accused of, without disclosing the alleged evidence to them or to their lawyers, and without informing them when they will be released.