Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Israa Gharib (1998 - August 22, 2019
in Bethlehem) is a 21-year-old Palestinian woman who was beaten and tortured to
death by three Palestinian youths for posting a selfie with her fiancé a day
before their marriage date. However, her family denied this accusation,
claiming that she died of a heart attack.
Investigations showed that the cause
of death was a severe beating that led to acute respiratory failure.
investigations
The issue was raised after a video
spread of a girl screaming in a hospital in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem
in August 2019.
On August 22, 2019, Israa died of
serious injuries in her home in Beit Sahour. Her death caused protests by a
number of women and feminist organizations in Palestine due to the suspicion
that it was an honor killing.
On 6 September, the Palestinian
authorities detained three persons in pretrial detention, pending the final
forensic report. Part of the samples were examined inside Palestine, while
another part was sent to Jordan, where the results are supposed to be delivered
to the Public Prosecution on September 10th.
During the societal upheaval of the
incident, three forensic doctors in the Ministry of Health submitted their
resignations, but the ministry denied any connection to their resignation with
Israa's case.
On September 12, 2019, the
investigation concluded that Gharib died due to complications in her
respiratory system due to severe and repeated beatings. Where the Palestinian
Public Prosecutor held a press conference in which he confirmed that the young
woman, Israa, was killed as a result of severe beating, based on the content of
the report, which stated that “the cause of Israa’s death was acute respiratory
failure resulting from the severe beatings and abuse she was subjected to,”denying the allegations that she fell from a balcony. home or have a heart
attack.
Accordingly, the Public Prosecution
directed the felony of murder against her three family members (M.S.), (B.G)
and (A.G).
reactions and public opinion
The hashtag #WeAreAllIsraa was
launched on social networks in solidarity with the cause. While the Palestinian
Prime Minister considered it a “society issue.”
The Justice Project, a Palestinian
human rights organization, expressed its condemnation, stating, "We are
angry and saddened by the crime of...heinous murder." While the
Independent Commission for Human Rights called for lessons to be drawn from the
killing incident, in order to ensure that the mistakes made with other women
are not repeated, by expediting the approval of the Family Protection from
Violence Act and putting it into effect.
The course of the trial
Sources familiar with the file of
the murder of the Palestinian young woman, Israa Gharib, confirmed that the
coming period may witness the entry of new people into the accusation circle in
the case that raised Palestinian and international public opinion.
On Monday, the Bethlehem Court of
First Instance held the second session of the trial in the case of the murder
of Israa Gharib, and the session was public, like the first session held on
November 18, and was devoted to hearing a number of 41 witnesses for the
prosecution, including the victim’s father, Nasser Gharib. Two nurses and two
doctors from the two hospitals where she underwent treatment and medical
examination.
The sources, who asked not to be
named, said, “Sorcerers had a major role in the psychological destruction of
Israa, which puts them in the circle of accusation, as one of the charlatans in
one of the Bethlehem camps told her that she was suffering from magic that
would cause her death, so her behavior and behavior began to change.” And she
had a constant obsession that someone was chasing her father to kill him, and
that this prompted her family to beat her severely to get out the jinn who
possessed her, as they believed, and that these actions prompted her father to
request that the rest of his testimony be kept confidential.
Representatives of Palestinian human
rights organizations attended the session of the ninth of December 2019,
including the representative of “Lawyers for Justice”, Fatima Al-Zahraa
Al-Halabi, and she said, “The court heard the testimony of Israa’s father,
which lasted about an hour and a half, and part of his testimony was public,
and the other part confidential. The public part talked about the
characteristics of his daughter, how she lived spoiled in the family as the
last of the cluster, and how her behavior changed in the recent period before
her death, including her fear of jinn and witchcraft, and the repetition that
there are people chasing her father to kill him.
Fatima Al-Halabi said: “The father,
who works in a barbershop, said that he received a call the night before Eid
al-Adha from his son Ihab, who is one of the accused of causing Israa’s death,
telling him that she had fallen from the balcony of the house, so he returned
home to see her. He found her calm in her bed, and returned to the court the
details of her occurrence. Because, according to him, she tried to escape from
the house, and this is the story that the family confirmed to the media in the
first period of spreading the news of Israa’s death, then he asked that the
rest of his testimony be confidential in order to preserve the family’s privacy
and cohesion.
Retracting the word “killed” and
replacing it with “death”
Dunia Al-Watan Agency, the only
agency that covers the trial sessions of the defendants in the Israa Gharib
case, retracted the term “killed” in the news it publishes, and replaced the
term with “the death of Israa Gharib,” after the Palestinian prosecution failed
to prove the existence of a murder to the Palestinian judiciary after five
hearings were held. courts in the case.
The release of the accused
On February 17, 2021, the
Palestinian judiciary decided to release the three defendants in the case in
exchange for a judicial bail, after contradictory evidence and statements of
the forensic doctor (supervising the autopsy of the girl Israa) at the court,
and the Palestinian prosecution did not provide any evidence proving that the
girl had been subjected to a crime, and in the end it proved In his statement to
the court, the forensic doctor stated that Israa had not been subjected to any
torture at all, and after listening to the forensic doctor's statements, the
court decided to release the defendants immediately.
source
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