The judge's decision thwarted the intention of Immigration Police headquarters to implement the following day a deportation order that had been issued against Oratokho for illegal residence in Israel. The order was issued despite the fact that the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court was slated yesterday to hear the demand for compensation that Oratokho had filed against the Israel Police, the Ministry of Public Security and the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. Oratokho is requesting compensation for injuries caused during a previous detention by a joint team of policemen and inspectors from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. As a result, he now suffers from permanent disability in his right arm.

The affair began on June 21, 1999. On that day, Oratokho was in the market in Talpiot, in Jerusalem. As he tells it, at about nine o'clock in the morning he noticed a crowd that had begun to run away from the scene and, fearing that a bomb had been planted nearby, he started to run, too. A joint team of police and Labor and Social Affairs Ministry inspectors arrested him. According to the damages suit, filed by attorney Ahuva Salzburg, the police and the inspectors applied "clearly unreasonable force, twisted his right arm forcefully behind his back and pulled it upward."

The state's version is different. In the defense brief submitted to the court, it was claimed that Oratokho tried to flee from his pursuers. In his flight, he "lost his balance and fell, stretching out his arm to break the fall." Only after he fell did the policemen and the inspectors manage to catch, handcuff and arrest him.

Because of his injury Oratokho was taken to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center and diagnosed with a broken right wrist. His arm was put in a cast and he was hospitalized for three days at the Prison Service medical center. From there he was taken to the illegal residents' wing at Ma'asiyahu Prison in Ramle. The Shaare Zedek doctors' recommendation to return two months later for X-rays and a check-up by the orthopedist - was not honored. Belatedly, and only after the intervention of the Physicians for Human Rights organization, Oratokho was examined by an orthopedic specialist.

Continuing pain

After four months, at the end of October, 1999, the cast was removed from Oratokho's arm but he continued to suffer from pain and restricted movement. His hand was dressed in a different form of support, and the doctors considered surgery. At the beginning of November, 1999, following a decision by the monitoring authorities at the Interior Ministry, Oratokho was released from prison. The doctors who had previously examined him decided not to perform the surgery to set his right wrist, which they thought would stop the pain but would cause him severe and permanent disability.

Subsequent to his injury, Oratokho filed a complaint with the Justice Ministry's Police Investigation Unit (PIU). He made a special note of one of the policeman who, he claimed, had visited the home of an eye-witness - also a foreign worker without a residence permit - who testified that Oratokho had not resisted arrest and had provided no justification for the use of force in his arrest. The witness, incidentally, was later deported from the country.

At the end of the inquiry, the PIU decided to close the file because of absence of grounds for culpability, but did file a complaint against a Labor Ministry inspector on the suspicion that he had been the one that caused the injury. The complaint file against the inspector was also closed, for similar reasons. In the brief for the damages suit, attorney Salzburg complained that despite his repeated applications, Oratokho never received the investigation file against the policemen and the inspectors who were involved in the incident in which he was injured.

Oratokho went free, but he remained without a legal residence permit and found it difficult to support himself because of his handicap. Friends and the Christian church to which he belonged helped him. He often said that he would prefer to return to his own country, where he had left his wife and children, but he wanted first to complete the medical treatment he needed and file a suit against the officials who, he claims, caused him his disability. Time after time, the Hotline for Migrant Workers applied on Oratokho's behalf to the department for visas and foreigners at the Interior Ministry to grant him a residence permit, if only a temporary one, but all requests to validate his legal status were rejected. The last time, in September, 2002, when he renewed his application to the Interior Ministry in Tel Aviv, he was required to pay a fine of NIS 3,985 because of his illegal residence in the country.

In June, 2002, Dr. Reuven Langer, a specialist in orthopedics and trauma and the director of the rehabilitation department at the Center for Rehabilitative Medicine in Haifa, determined, in a detailed medical opinion, that Oratokho "suffered injuries to his right hand as a result of it having been twisted very hard ... The mechanism of the breakage was not typical of a fall and the force that was applied caused, in addition to breaks, tearing in the tendons.

"Today," added Langer, "he suffers from degeneration of the root of his right hand and limpness of the hand muscles. Functionally, he is unable to open a door, cut food, open a bottle, lift a heavy object and therefore his right hand is useless. He is in need of medical attention from a surgeon who is a specialist in hands. It is almost certain that a specialist would recommend surgery. The surgery would reduce to a minimum the damage that has been caused him and enable his return to work in restricted circumstances." After the surgery, he added, Oratokho would suffer from 90 percent disability.

On the basis of this medical opinion, attorney Salzburg filed the claim for damages. In the defense brief, the Jerusalem district attorney's office wrote that it had been "unable to locate the prosecutor's file in which, apparently, the material on the investigation conducted by the unit for the investigation of police is also to be found"; that the break in Oratokho's wrist was caused by his having stumbled and fallen when he was trying to run away from the scene; that the state is not responsible for the actions taken during the supposed attack, as they were carried out by police and inspectors, and that the state is not responsible for the damages claimed in the suit as it had not explicitly authorized the alleged attack nor did it approve it. The prosecutor's office asked the court to reject outright the claim against the state.

On May 5, three and a half weeks before deliberations began on the damage suit that was to take place this week, Oratokho was arrested in Tel Aviv and transferred to the prison-Hotel Renaissance in Nazareth. The following day, an appeal against his deportation order was submitted to the supervisor of border control at the Interior Ministry. At the same time, because of Oratokho's application to the court that oversees the custodianship of illegal residents, at the beginning of last week, the representative of the court, attorney Elad Arad, decided that "Oratokho should be allowed to be examined by a doctor on behalf of the State of Israel, which is being sued by him," and ordered the Immigration Police to delay his deportation until May 27, 2003.

However, the police ignored the court's decision and last Wednesday, Oratokho was ordered to prepare for his deportation the following day. In the middle of the night, he contacted Sigal Rosen, director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a nonprofit hotline for migrant workers that promotes workers' rights. Subsequently, attorney Naor received the temporary order putting off Oratokho's expulsion, from Judge Arad in Jerusalem.

At the end of the week the Immigration Police also tried to expel two workers from Ghana: Stephan Mpiani and Tony Ado, who were detained at the Renaissance. Ado was deported, but Mpiani is still in the country. Mpiani, 38, who has been detained at the Renaissance for about two months now, was to have been deported even though he has an 18-month-old son and a wife, Emelia, who is seven months pregnant and has been relegated to bed rest and is unable to fly due to serious bleeding.

Following an urgent petition submitted in the name of Mpiani, Jerusalem District Court Judge Yehonatan Adiel issued an interim order instructing the Immigration Police and the Interior Ministry to postpone the deportation. Under the order, Mpiani must deposit a bond of NIS 20,000.