The Letter (H)
On 5 October 2005, Adalah sent a letter to Attorney General (AG), the Minister of Justice, the Director of Courts Administration demanding an end to the holding of court hearings in Shata Prison and their transferal to the Nazareth District Court.
Court hearings on the petitions of prisoners incarcerated in the Galilee area are held on a permanent basis in a small room designated for judicial deliberations within Shata prison. A judge travels to the prison from the Nazareth District Court once or twice every two weeks and hears and decides on the petitions of many prisoners in a short space of time. In the room sits the judge, a legal intern positioned besides the judge and a typist to record the minutes of the hearings. Close by, prison representatives sit in order, accompanied by an attorney from the AG’s Office who represents the Israel Prison Service (IPS). The prisoners and their attorneys stand outside this room until their turn. During their wait, they are forbidden from entering the room to attend the hearings unrelated to their own case.
Unlike hearings held in ordinary courts, which are public, anyone wishing to attend court hearings in Shata Prison must request permission in advance from a prison warden. Persons with a criminal record are not allowed to enter court hearings unless they obtain a special permit from the Director of the Northern Prisons’ District, a procedure which is nonexistent in ordinary courts.
In the letter, Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker argued that the court hearings held inside Shata Prison are illegal as they violate the Courts Law (1984) as well as numerous constitutional principles. According to Article 34 of the Courts Law, for example, the District Court must sit in the location assigned to it by order of the Minister of Justice. The location determined for the Nazareth District Court is the town of Nazareth and not Shata Prison. Furthermore, under Article 3 of the regulations for court proceedings relating to prisoners’ petitions, the District Court can sit in a prison and not in its usual location on condition that such a re-location is to the benefit of the hearing and for the sake of attaining justice. There can be no doubt, argued Adalah, that the practice pf holding of court hearings within Shata Prison is extremely far from the attainment of justice constituting in and of itself a breach of the principles of justice.
Adalah detailed the clear infringements of the constitutional rights of prisoners and the public generally entailed by this practice, as well as the principle of the openness of court hearings specifically in the letter. Article 3 of the Basic Law: The Judiciary provides that court hearings should be open unless otherwise stipulated by law. Given the absence of a law which determines the openness of prisoners’ court hearings, Adalah argued that the conditioning of the general public’s entry to the hearings on prior permission from a prison warden represents a violation of the principle of the openness of court hearings, thereby contradicting the aforesaid Basic Law. Moreover, this violation of the principle of the openness of court hearings leads to infringements of other constitutional rights, such as the right of access to the courts, the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, the public’s right to know, the right of equality before the law, and the right to a fair trial. In addition, the close relationship between the prison’s representatives, the attorneys of the prisons and the Court is contrary to the principles of neutrality and the separation of powers.
Adalah therefore demanded the immediate transferal of the hearings to the Nazareth District Court and the banning of further hearings inside the prison.