ACRI submitted a petition to the Supreme Court on behalf of Tali Fahima to demand that the court prohibit the Israel Prison Service (IPS) from publishing slanderous and personal information relating to her interrogation and detention, and that it order the IPS to take substantive steps against those responsible for the publications. The appeal relates to the IPS’s practice of disseminating tendentious press releases on both a particular and principled level, and lays special emphasis on its inherent violation of an internee`s right to privacy and dignity.
The appeal was originally submitted last September, and is directed against the IPS, the Prison Commissioner, Lieutenant General Yaakov Ganot, and the prison spokesperson, Ofer Lefler. The appeal asks the court to overturn the ruling issued by the Tel-Aviv District Court on the original petition submitted on this issue by Attorney Smadar Ben Natan, and to order the IPS to desist from its practice of publicizing personal information regarding Tali Fahima. The court is also asked to instruct the IPS to take substantive action against those responsible for the dissemination of this information and other offensive comments that were published in the media. The appeal was submitted by ACRI Attorney Avner Pinchuk.
Attorney Pinchuk claims that the IPS personnel provided selective, tendentious, and unreliable reports on the detainee, Fahima, to the media, in a malicious and “yellow” journalistic style. These media reports undermine her right to a private life, and humiliate her in the eyes of the public. Although the District Court was critical of the style of some of the media reports, it still rejected the petition on the basis that Fahima’s actions were carried out in the presence of prison guards, and thus cannot be interpreted as a violation of her “private domain”, and the transmission of any information relating to this conduct cannot be considered to be a violation of her right to privacy. The court also stated that the prison authorities are entitled to publicize her “negative behavior” as a response to the great public interest aroused by her arrest and detention, and her subsequent public condemnation of her conditions of internment.
The IPS clearly feels at liberty to carry out ugly press campaigns against individuals interned in their detention facilities, including the dissemination of selective and injurious information to the print and broadcast media. Rather than ensuring the right to privacy and dignity of those under their authority, these same officials issue scathing and discriminatory public statements to fan the flames of public hostility, and compound the public humiliation of specific internees. Attorney Pinchuk makes clear in the text of the appeal that these calculated media reports have serious implications for the basic rights of numerous detainees, including the right to dignity and privacy, and sometimes even the right to due process. Examples are the IPS’s decision to publish a private letter written by prisoner Marwan Barghouti to his wife, or, in another instance, the public and salacious descriptions of the meeting between Yigal Amir and his wife, Larisa Trembovler. The appeal therefore calls on the court to protect the right of detainees to privacy, and to outlaw the misuse of the IPS’s extensive powers to humiliate internees and turn them into “the best show in town”.
In the case of Tali Fahima, the prison personnel, encouraged by the rejection of the petition by the District Court, continued their illegitimate actions, and even renewed their public statements relating to Fahima prior to her criminal court hearing. The appointed minister for the IPS, Gideon Ezra, went a step further and made a televised announcement attesting to her guilt and declared that, “this is proof that she serves the Palestinians and she therefore deserves to stay where she is now”. Attorney Pinchuk emphasizes that this is not the first time that the IPS has violated the right of prisoners and detainees to dignity and privacy. It is therefore extremely important that the Supreme Court issue a principled ruling on the issue.
The appeal provides examples of provocative publications that relate to Tali Fahima that were disseminated by IPS personnel during her period of detention and allege, among other things, that she threatened to murder a prison guard because of his/her refusal to light her cigarette, that she refused to undergo a body search, as well as published quotes by a “senior IPS official” who relates sarcastically to Fahima’s complaints about her prison conditions and food quality, (“from her comments,” the official states, “one could be led to believe that before she was arrested she only ate gourmet food”), and finally, the issuance of public statements accusing her of receiving regular payments from the Palestinian Authority to finance her small kiosk.
The appeal further claims that the publication of media reports concerning Tali Fahima was unauthorized, and that the IPS is prohibited from exposing internees to public scrutiny to satisfy the general public’s desire for scandal and voyeurism. Whatever crime Tali Fahima is accused of, the appeal adds, the only sanction that the state is authorized to impose is the prescribed punishment for her crime, which is subject to an appropriate judicial process. Moreover, the “negative behavior” attributed to Fahima by the IPS, does not represent a legitimate basis for public interest, and does not justify the publication of media reports that violate an internee’s right to privacy and dignity.
The District Court, adds Attorney Pinchuk, was mistaken when it disregarded the misuse of the IPS’s access to the media by virtue of its official status. In this “media era” a great deal of importance is attached to the power of the media and image management. Even if a basis for public interest does exist, which obligates the IPS to provide information to the public on issues such as how the IPS treats those interned in its institutions, or its actions to ensure their legal rights, this does not entitle IPS officials to act as gossipmongers or to initiate tendentious, sensationalistic, and slanderous media reports. It is also important to note that while IPS personnel are free to respond to media reports that refer to them, internees do not have the same luxury and are prevented from reacting freely or immediately in kind. Tali Fahima, for example, is unable to react to, or deny, the various lies that were made public about her by IPS officials through the media, or to place the issues under discussion in their appropriate context. She has no way of letting the public know that the “provocative” behavior attributed to her, in relation to her refusal to undergo a body search, was nothing more than an attempt to avoid yet another humiliation by a specific prison guard who had humiliated her and treated her roughly during previous body searches. In light of the aforementioned, the Court is asked to prohibit the IPS from publishing additional injurious media reports concerning Fahima, and to order the IPS to take substantive steps against those responsible for the reports that have already been published.
last updated : 31/01/06
