TEL AVIV: Handcuffed and in a brown prison uniform, but looking energetic and in high spirits, Israel’s most famous Palestinian prisoner, Marwan Barghouti, made his first public appearance on Wednesday since he was arrested near Ramallah in April.
Cameras, reporters, and security men scrummed around in the small courtroom before the judge entered as Mr Barghouti shouted that the uprising would be successful.
A member of the Palestinian legislative council with a history of contacts with Israeli moderates and members of the peace movement, he has been charged with a series of offences, ranging from murder and attempted murder to terrorism. The indictment cites 37 attacks which killed 26 people and wounded scores of Israeli civilians.
Mr Barghouti’s supporters say the trial is aimed at discrediting him and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, by showing that they helped to organise suicide bombings behind a mask of non-violence. If it succeeds it will enhance the Israeli government’s case that no serious peace negotiations should be held with Mr Arafat.
The prosecution says that the troops which occupied Mr Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah this spring discovered documents linking Mr Barghouti and Mr Arafat to terror attacks and suicide bombings during the two years of the intifada.
It plans to call two of Mr Barghouti’s deputies, Nasr Aweis and Nasr Abu Hamid, who are also in prison, as witnesses. Barghouti was not asked to plead during Wednesday’s 15-minute opening session, and his lawyers argued that Israeli courts had no authority to try him, but as soon as the proceedings began he demanded to be heard.
“When can I speak? When can I speak?” he implored.
“You cannot speak right now. You have excellent lawyers. When the time comes, you can speak.” Judge Zvi Gurfinkel replied.
The case was adjourned to September 5.
Mr Barghouti’s popularity has soared since he was jailed and most opinion polls in the occupied territories put him second only to Yasser Arafat, who is a generation older. He has overtaken Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, who used to come second.
This will be one of the most important political trials in Israel’s history. The state will argue that it is purely criminal. He and his lawyers will attempt to put Israel in the dock.
“This is a golden opportunity to try the Israeli occupation for all the crimes committed against the Palestinian people,” Khadir Shkirat, one of the defence lawyers, said.
The attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, has taken a gamble by holding the trial in a civilian rather than a military court, where press and public could have been barred.
It may backfire if the state’s evidence looks flimsy or if Mr Barghouti can present himself as a martyr who was tortured in prison, and make a powerful case against Israeli tactics in the West Bank.
“They had better have the evidence to nail him down. Otherwise the Israeli government will be in deep trouble. The prosecution cannot hide behind state security and only reveal evidence to the judge,” Avishai Margalit, a leading analyst of Israeli politics, said.
Mr Barghouti’s supporters have opened a website (freebarghouti.org) on which they claim that his arrest was an abduction and his transfer to a jail in Israel illegal.
Under the Oslo accords judicial proceedings in “Area A” of the West Bank, which includes Ramallah, Mr Barghouti’s home town, were transferred the Palestinian Authority.
Born in 1959, Mr Barghouti joined Fatah, the biggest of the Palestinians’ secular national movements, when he was 15.
He was jailed for four years in 1978 for being a member of a then banned organisation. He became Fatah’s secretary general in the West Bank in 1994 and was elected to the legislative council two years later. Israel says he became head of Fatah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
The Israeli authorities argue that when suicide bombings began Mr Barghouti first defended them and later was drawn into funding and orchestrating them.
Referring to the first intifada, which ended with the Oslo accords, Mr Barghouti said: “We tried seven years of intifada without negotiations, and then seven years of negotiations without intifada: perhaps it’s time to try both simultaneously”.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service
