The implications of a U.S. court's indictment of the Palestinian Authority

posted on: Mar 18, 2015

In February, a jury in an American court found the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) liable for compensation payments to US citizens who suffered damage in terror actions in Israel between 2000 and 2004. The verdict was reached using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1992, which allows US citizens to seek compensation if damage has been inflicted on them by terrorist actions considered. The decision will have a number of important implications.

One of the implications is that the court found that there were operational links between the PA/PLO and the individuals who carried out the attacks in Israel. The evidence, the court was told, was based on intelligence information as well as, in some cases, the interrogation of suspects.  If the interrogations were carried out by the Israel Security Agency (ISA), it suggests that the court considers Israel’s methods of obtaining information and its interrogation techniques to be legitimate and meet US standards.

This is questionable as the ISA uses interrogation techniques on Palestinian detainees which are considered controversial even by some Israeli human rights groups such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI). The court should have reviewed each piece of information to make sure it was not extracted through the use of illegal methods. This would have required that the court call the “terrorist suspects” in for questioning to enable the jury to hear their testimonies as the primary source of information–as opposed to the use of secondary sources such as documentation provided by ISA. This did not happen.

Source: mondoweiss.net