While the court determined that their detention under the Prevention of Infiltration Law was unrelated to the circumstances of their entry into Israel, it ordered that their release be limited to a period of 60 to 90 days, during which arrangements would be made either for them to leave Israel or to regulate their legal status in the country.

The detainees are citizens of Conakry-Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Mali and Eritrea. They were arrested while infiltrating into Israel in February and March 2006, and were sent for detention to the Ketziot facility, where they were held until Red Cross representatives learned of their presence there.

In early May, the group was transferred to the Maasiyahu Prison (a facility of the Israel Prisons Service) and appeared before the Custody Oversight Court, which ordered their release due to the unlawful manner in which they had been detained.

This decision was appealed by the Interior Ministry, and the case moved on to the Tel Aviv District Court. However, the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Refugee Rights Program at Tel Aviv University then filed a joint petition with the High Court of Justice, appealing the ruling. After the petition was accepted by the High Court, the Tel Aviv District Court held an additional hearing on the case last week.

Judge Oded Mudrik accepted the claim that the Africans were detained unlawfully "without any legal reference or even on the basis of a legal reference of unfounded or dubious validity." He also ruled that there was no reason to hold them on the basis of the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which is intended to prevent the entry into Israel of individuals wishing to harm state security.

"Based on current policy, they should have been placed in the care of the Interior Ministry within a few days at most, on the basis of the Entry to Israel Law. The fact that this did not happen is evidence, first and foremost, of a very serious flaw in the operational practices of the relevant parties," he wrote.

With this statement, Mudrik set clear boundaries on use of the Prevention of Infiltration Law, an emergency law that dates to the 1950s, which the state has been using to incarcerate asylum-seekers from Africa who cross Israel's border with Egypt.