|
'Collaborator' gets 3 years
22/12/2005 17:05 - (SA)
Jerusalem - A Jewish woman, who became a hate figure in Israel after being arrested on charges of helping a terrorist organisation, was jailed for three years on Thursday for collaborating with Palestinian militants.
Tali Fahima, 29, was sentenced by a court in Tel Aviv under the terms of a plea bargain, which meant she dodged the most serious charges initially levelled at her.
Under the terms of a deal reached between defence and prosecution lawyers last month, Fahima had agreed to plead guilty to a series of charges including contact with a foreign agent, passing information to the enemy and defying a ban on Israelis entering Palestinian-controlled areas.
In exchange, more serious charges including helping the enemy in wartime, support for a terror organisation and possession of a weapon, were dropped.
Variety of offences
As Fahima has already spent 18 months in custody, she should be released in less than a year, including time off for good behaviour.
Fahima was arrested in May 2004 at a checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Jenin after having spent time with Zakaria Zubeidi, the local head of the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and one of Israel's most wanted men.
She was charged with a variety of offences and placed in administrative detention that September, becoming the first Israeli Jew to be detained on allegations of collaboration with Palestinian militants.
Her subsequent appearances in court drew both left-wing supporters who saw her as a victim of overly zealous security services and right-wing protestors who saw her as a traitor and self-hating Jew.
At one stage, a well-known protest writer Shmuel Yerushalmi was questioned by the Shin Beth internal security services after penning a poem in support of Fahima.
Security services 'got carried away'
The one-time legal secretary from Tel Aviv, who used to vote for the right-wing Likud party, was increasingly drawn into radical politics after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising five years ago.
She has said that her quest to "fill in the many gaps in my knowledge" about the life of Palestinians persuaded her to travel to the occupied West Bank and seek out Zubeidi.
Shortly after her arrest, defence minister Shaul Mofaz declared that "Fahima represents a concrete and immediate threat to the security of the state", and it was impossible to present evidence before a judge for fear of jeopardising intelligence sources.
Her lawyers have argued, however, that the decision not to pursue the more serious charges showed that the security services now recognised that they had "got carried away".
In the written sentence that was handed down, the panel of judges said they had been impressed with her remarks at a pre-sentence hearing when she declared that "I am a loyal citizen of my country, where I was raised and educated. I followed the values of Judaism on which I was raised".
|
News
