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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
Israeli law provided normal guarantees for its citizens against
arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Writs of habeas corpus and other
safeguards against violations of due process existed. Confessions
extracted by torture and other forms of duress were inadmissible as
evidence in court. The Criminal Procedure Law of 1965 described
general provisions with regard to application of law, pretrial and
trial procedure, and appeal. It supplemented the Courts Law of
1957, which prescribed the composition, jurisdiction, and
functioning of the court system and provided details of appellate
remedies and procedures.
All secular courts in Israel dealt with criminal as well as
civil matters. The magistrate courts decided about 150,000 criminal
cases in 1985. The district courts decided about 12,500 criminal
cases in the first instance and 3,700 as appeal cases. The Supreme
Court decided approximately 2,000 criminal cases of all kinds. The
average lapse of time between committing an offense and conviction
was nineteen months in magistrate courts and eleven months in
district courts.
Punishments for convicted criminals included suspended
sentences, fines, a choice of imprisonment or fine, imprisonment
and fine, or imprisonment. The death penalty could be imposed for
treason or for conviction for Nazi war crimes but, as of 1988,
Eichmann was the only person to be executed as the result of a
judicial process. Prison sentences were mandatory only for
exceptional crimes, such as attacking a policeman. Only a small
percentage of criminal convictions actually resulted in
incarceration, and sentences were relatively short. In 1986 more
than half of the prison terms were for one year or less and 96
percent were for fewer than five years. Sentences by military
tribunals were more harsh; terms of fifteen years to life
imprisonment were not unusual.
Warrants generally were required for arrests and searches,
although a person could be arrested without a warrant if there were
reason to suspect that he or she had committed a felony, was a
fugitive from justice, or was apprehended in the act of committing
an offense. A person so arrested had to be brought before a judge
within forty-eight hours; the judge could order the prisoner's
release, with or without bail, or could authorize further detention
for a period up to fifteen days. Authorization for detention could
be renewed for an additional fifteen-day period, but any further
extension required the approval of the attorney general.
Administrative detention could be used in security-related cases
when formally charging a person would compromise sensitive sources
of information.
Unless detained for an offense punishable by death or life
imprisonment, an arrested person could be released on bail, which
could take the form of personal recognizance, cash deposit, surety
bond, or any combination thereof. A person held in custody must be
released unconditionally if trial had not commenced within sixty
days or if it had not ended within one year from the date on which
a statement of charge had been filed. Only a judge of the Supreme
Court could order an extension of these time limitations.
Any person arrested was entitled to communicate with a friend
or relative and a lawyer as soon as possible. In felony cases,
arrests could be kept secret for reasons of national security upon
request of the minister of defense. Representation by counsel in
such cases could be delayed up to seven days and up to fifteen days
in terrorist-related cases. Offenses committed by civilians against
emergency regulations (which had been in effect since the state of
emergency in force at the founding of the nation in 1948) were
tried by military courts composed of three commissioned officers.
Until 1963 the judgments of such courts were final, but at that
time the right of appeal was granted under an amendment to the
Military Justice Law. Individuals charged with offenses against the
Prevention of Infiltration Law were tried by a military court
consisting of a single officer; appeals were heard by a court
composed of three officers.
Magistrate court cases generally were tried before a single
judge. Cases in the Supreme Court were heard by panels of three
judges as were appeals cases in district courts and cases where the
maximum sentence was ten years or more. There were no juries in
Israeli courts. Persons accused of crimes punishable by
imprisonment of ten years or more, juveniles, and persons unable to
afford private counsel could be represented by a lawyer appointed
by the court. In pleading, defendants could remain silent or could
testify under oath in their own behalf, in which case they were
subject to cross-examination. They could also make statements upon
which they could not be examined.
A special judicial commission headed by the former president of
the Supreme Court, Moshe Landau, reported in 1987 that, since 1971,
internal security agents of Shin Bet had routinely used physical
and psychological mistreatment to obtain confessions. The Landau
Commission found that Shin Bet interrogators had, under orders,
systematically perjured themselves when accused persons tried to
retract their confessions. According to the United States
Department of States's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
for 1987, the commission set out in a secret annex to the report
what it regarded as acceptable physical and psychological pressures
that might be exerted in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
Data as of December 1988
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