• Évadés de Jénine. Zakaria Zubeidi, « J’ai cru à la paix »
    Gwenaëlle Lenoir > 12 septembre 2021
    https://orientxxi.info/Evades-de-Jenine-Zakaria-Zubeidi-J-ai-cru-a-la-paix


    Camp de réfugiés de Jénine, 17 janvier 2008. Zakaria Zubeidi — 31 ans à l’époque — dans le Théâtre de la liberté nouvellement créé.
    Saif Dahlah/AFP

    Pendant quelques jours, les six évadés d’une prison israélienne ont fait vibrer les Palestiniens. Leur défi lancé aux autorités d’occupation a provoqué émotion et fierté, même si quatre d’entre eux ont été repris. Parmi eux, le plus connu : Zakaria Zubeidi.

    #Résistants_évadés

    • Zakaria Zubeidi was an intifada symbol. This week, he became Israel’s most wanted fugitive
      David B. Green | Sep. 10, 2021 | Haaretz.com
      https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-he-was-an-intifada-symbol-now-he-s-israel-s-most-wanted-fugitive-1

      Zakaria Zubeidi was an intifada symbol. This week, he became Israel’s most wanted fugitive
      As a child, Zakaria Zubeidi took part in a theater established by an Israeli peace activist. Years later, as Israel planned to put him on trial for several terror attacks, he became one of six prison-breakers on the run

      Escaped Palestinian security prisoner Zakaria Zubeidi, who was apprehended on Saturday morning, has been a source of fascination for Israelis for more than two decades. This can be attributed to his swings between advocating peaceful reconciliation with Israel and working in a Palestinian community theater, and his extensive experience as a militant involved in terror attacks against Israel, particularly during the second intifada two decades ago. His boyish good looks, ability and readiness to speak with journalists, and repeated escapes from death have only added to his enigmatic mystique.

      Zakaria Mohammed Abdelrahman Zubeidi was born in 1976, and for his entire life, when not in prison or on the run, his home has been in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. He is one of the eight children of Mohammed and Samira Zubeidi. The father was a teacher turned foundry worker who was arrested by the Israelis for membership in Fatah, the Palestinian liberation movement led by Yasser Arafat. Mohammed died when Zakaria was 17.

      Zakaria attended an UNRWA school in the camp, and had his first run-in with Israeli forces at age 13, when he was shot in the leg by soldiers while throwing stones during the first intifada (1987-1991), leaving him with a permanent limp. Before that, however, he became involved in the theater program that Arna Mer-Khamis established in the Jenin camp.

      Arna Mer was an Israeli Jew – a communist and human-rights activist – married to Saliba Khamis, an Arab Israeli and a leader of Israel’s Communist Party. She took part in a variety of educational and human-rights projects in the West Bank, and during the first intifada organized a theater workshop in the refugee camp intended to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youth. Zakaria and his older brother Daoud were among the group’s core members, and their mother offered part of the family home to serve as a rehearsal space.

      Zakaria’s first arrest came when he was 14, again for stone throwing, and this time it led to a six-month sentence in an Israeli prison. Upon his release, he did not return to school. Within less than a year came his next arrest, this time for trying to throw a Molotov cocktail. He later told an interviewer that he learned to assemble the weapon in prison, although in this case, he set his sleeve on fire when he reached back to toss the bottle.

      He began a cycle of arrests and increasingly longer imprisonments – his next one was for four and a half years – and with each incarceration his identity as a militant and leader seems to have grown. He also learned Hebrew during his time inside, allowing him to serve as a prisoner representative.

      Stealing cars and driving trucks

      Zubeidi’s release coincided with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, after which he volunteered for the Palestinian police force. But he quit after a year, later complaining that he was put off by the corruption and nepotism in the service.

      Zubeidi spent the remainder of the 1990s working, both in Israel and Jenin, sometimes legally and other times without a permit. When he didn’t have a job, he stole cars, which led to his arrest by Palestinian authorities. In September 2000, with the start of the second intifada, Zubeidi lost his legitimate job as a truck driver and was drawn into militant activities, including learning how to build bombs.

      In March 2002, Zubeidi’s mother was killed when an Israeli army sniper shot her while she was standing inside a friend’s home during an operation in the Jenin camp. A short time later, one of his brothers, Taha, was also shot and killed by soldiers. The following month, after a Hamas suicide bombing at a Netanya hotel during a Passover seder killed 29 Israelis, the army launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank. One of the main targets was the Jenin camp, which Israel had identified as the origin of a number of terror attacks.

      Among the hundreds of homes in the camp demolished by Israeli bulldozers was that of the Zubeidi family. It was in the wake of these dramatic losses that Zubeidi joined and then emerged as a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, in the Jenin camp.

      Some years later, Zubeidi complained to a journalist about how hurt he was not to have heard from any of his Israeli friends after the deaths of his mother and brother. “We opened our home and [Israel] demolished it,” he said. “Every week, 20-30 Israelis would come there to do theater. We fed them. And afterward, not one of them picked up the phone. That is when we saw the real face of the left in Israel.”

      By the end of the intifada, Zubeidi was on the short list of Israel’s most-wanted terrorists. Israeli authorities consider him directly responsible for an attack on a Likud party office in Beit She’an in 2002 in which six Israelis were killed, as well as one suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in 2004. In 2003, a bomb he was preparing exploded prematurely, scarring his face, but despite that and an apparent four attempts by Israel to assassinate him, Zubeidi continually outwitted death. He also became the effective political boss of the Jenin camp.

      During the period when he was in Israel’s crosshairs, Zubeidi gained an unlikely ally in Tali Fahima, an Israeli Jew in her late 20s, a legal secretary who offered him translation assistance but also came to Jenin to serve as a “human shield” to prevent the Israeli army from attacking Zubeidi. Fahima was eventually arrested and tried on charges related to contact with an enemy, and served time in prison. The Israeli media speculated that she and Zubeidi had a romantic relationship, something they both denied. (Zubeidi is married and the father of two children.)

      Reaching out

      By the end of the intifada, Zubeidi acknowledged to a number of interviewers his belief that the armed struggle had been a failure and only worsened the Palestinians’ situation. He also expressed an interest in working with Israeli peace activists.

      This led to a meeting in 2007 between him and Juliano Mer-Khamis, the son of Arna, and their reestablishing of a theater company in Jenin, which they called the Freedom Theater. Juliano made a documentary about the group in which Zubeidi features. Around the same time, amid renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (after the split between Fatah and Hamas, which took control of Gaza), Zubeidi was one of thousands of Palestinian militants who received amnesty from prosecution by Israel.

      In the Hollywood version of this story, maybe Zubeidi would have developed into one of the founders of a Palestinian state, following a peace accord with Israel, or perhaps a theater director. Instead, he has spent a decade and a half in and out of Israeli and Palestinian prisons, his fate affected as much by political conditions in both Israel and the West Bank as by his own swings between peaceful activity and militancy, optimism and despondency. He also managed to work on a master’s degree in cultural studies at Birzeit University, writing a thesis based on his own life that he called “The Dragon and the Hunter.”

      In 2019, Zubeidi was arrested by the Shin Bet security service and indicted on suspicions of carrying out shooting attacks on two Israeli buses filled with civilians in the West Bank. To those charges were added several more serious ones dating back to the second intifada, as the amnesty he received in 2007 was rescinded. His trial began in 2019, but at the time of his prison break Monday – together with five Palestinian prisoners from Islamic Jihad – it was still ongoing. He was captured by Israeli forces on Saturday morning.

    • Vivent les évadés - [Les amis du théâtre de la liberté de Jénine]
      http://atljenine.net/spip.php?article205&lang=fr


      Parmi les six prisonniers évadés se trouve Zakaria Zubeidi, le plus connu et que nous connaissons bien comme cofondateur du Freedom Theatre (Théâtre de la Liberté) du camp de réfugiés de Jénine.
      Zakaria est présenté partout comme le leader des Brigades des Martyrs d’Al-Aqsa, ce qu’il a effectivement été pendant toute une période de résistance armée à l’occupation militaire illégale de la Cisjordanie par Israël. Ce qui se dit moins, c’est qu’à un moment, il a déposé les armes et décidé de passer à une autre forme de résistance, la résistance culturelle.

    • La Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine nous propose les informations qu’elle a recueillies sur les conditions de détention des palestiniens détenus par Israël sous régime militaire.
      https://www.prison-insider.com/fichepays/prisonsisraelpalestine

      Ils sont incarcérés dans les #prisons_israéliennes situées pour la plupart hors des territoires occupés, en contradiction avec le droit international. Les mineurs sont les principales cibles des arrestations. Arrêtés pour des motifs politiques, ils sont particulièrement exposés à la détention arbitraire, à la torture et aux mauvais traitements.

      L’organisation palestinienne SHAMS nous met également à disposition son rapport de janvier 2017 sur la peine de mort appliquée par la Palestine. Quatre palestiniens sont exécutés, en 2016, par le Hamas sans l’accord du président de l’Autorité palestinienne, Mahmoud Abbas.

      https://plateforme-palestine.org

  • Projet de réforme pénale : rien de neuf, en pire | l’Actualité des luttes
    https://actualitedesluttes.info/?p=3219

    Dans cette émission nous tenterons, avec l’aide de Pierrette Poncela spécialiste en droit pénal, de décrypter le nouveau projet de réforme pénale du gouvernement Macron. Projet qui devrait annoncer la fin de l’incarcération pour les peines de moins de 6 mois ou 1 an et le développement des peines supplémentaires dites peines alternatives (TIG, bracelet électronique), mais également voir la disparition des Cours d’assise pour certains crimes ou l’on risque moins de 20 ans. Tout un programme sécuritaire, qui renforce ce qui existe déjà… Durée : 1h. Source : Fréquence Paris Plurielle

    http://actualitedesluttes.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/180322.mp3

    • La #surpopulation_carcérale s’est intensifiée en 2016 jusqu’à atteindre un record historique en juillet : le gouvernement a alors annoncé un plan de construction de plus de 10 000 places de prison. Les nouvelles prisons – plus grandes, plus modernes et pourtant jugées plus déshumanisantes – ont pourtant été construites en nombre ces dernières années.
      https://www.prison-insider.com/fichepays/fra-2016?s=le-systeme-penitentiaire#le-systeme-penitentiaire

      Les établissements pénitentiaires sont, au 1er janvier 2016, au nombre de 187 :

      . 86 maisons d’arrêt (et 45 quartiers MA situés dans des centres pénitentiaires),
      . 94 établissements pour peines :
      . 27 centres de détention (et 39 quartiers CD situés dans des centres pénitentiaires)
      . 6 maisons centrales (et 8 quartiers MC situés dans des centres pénitentiaires)
      . 11 centres de semi-liberté (et 14 quartiers de semi-liberté ainsi que 9 quartiers pour peines aménagées situés dans des centres pénitentiaires)
      . 50 centre pénitentiaires comprenant au moins deux quartiers différents.
      . 6 établissements pénitentiaires pour mineurs (EPM)
      . 1 établissement public de santé national à Fresnes.

      54 établissements en gestion privée. #PPP

  • https://www.prison-insider.com/fichepays/prisonsenturquie

    La population carcérale turque augmente considérablement depuis 2005 passant de 53 296 personnes détenues à 229 790 en 2017. Pour asseoir sa politique répressive, le gouvernement envisage la construction de plus de 200 nouvelles prisons dans les cinq prochaines années.

    Un climat répressif s’installe à la suite de la tentative de coup d’Etat du 15 juillet 2016. Citoyens, avocats, journalistes, médecins, hommes politiques, juges et intellectuels sont visés par les intimidations, les arrestations massives et les mauvais traitements. Des milliers de prisonniers politiques remplissent les prisons turques, accusés de terrorisme, de soutien au mouvement Gülen ou au Parti des travailleurs du Kurdistan (PKK).

    Les conditions de détention et l’accès aux droits varient d’une prison à l’autre et se dégradent au vu de la surpopulation grandissante. Les #prisons de haute sécurité de type F reposent sur un principe d’isolement strict et extrême. Elles sont surnommées "les tombeaux" . Les organisations de la société civile ne sont plus autorisées à intervenir au sein des prisons.

    #turquie #prison_insider

  • En Tunisie, dérives autoritaires et libertés sous surveillance – JeuneAfrique.com
    http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/485104/politique/en-tunisie-derives-autoritaires-et-libertes-sous-surveillance

    Arrestations arbitraires, atteintes à la vie privée, humiliations, interdits de toutes sortes… Les #dérives_autoritaires liées à l’inadéquation entre de vieilles lois obsolètes et la Constitution se multiplient.

    Oct 2017 - rapport annuel de prison insider
    https://www.prison-insider.com/fichepays/tun-2016#introduction-577e269702da8

    Les conditions de vie dans les prisons tunisiennes sont difficiles : établissements vétustes, manque d’hygiène, accès problématique aux soins de santé, alimentation pauvre, activités et parloirs insuffisants, violences,#torture, etc.

    Cette surpopulation est causée par des délais de justice élevés, des peines longues et une part importante de prévenus. Le recours à la #détention_préventive est la norme. Les #prisons_tunisiennes comptent autant de prévenus que de condamnés.

    #répression #homophobie

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxAvj2cidBs

    I lived in a dream for a moment
    We’d loved in a midnight solitude
    But I never knew at the moment
    Love was just an interlude

    I thrill as your arms would enfold me
    A kiss of surrender says the mood
    Then heaven fell down when you told me
    Love’s a passing interlude

    The magic was unsurpassed
    Too good to last
    The magic my heart once knew
    Is dressed in blue

    The shadow of night all around me
    I walk in a moonlight solitude
    When I thought romance really found me
    Love was just an interlude

    The shadow of night all around me
    I walk in a moonlight solitude
    When I thought romance really found me
    Love was just an interlude