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| By Yuval Yoaz | "Haaretz", March 21, 2007 |
Court: State must explain why it hasn't dealt with Sudanese refugees
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday ruled that the State Prosecution has 45 days to explain why it has not dealt with the hundreds of Sudanese refugees detained by authorities since seeking asylum in Israel. Justices Dorit Beinisch, Salim Jubran and David Cheshin issued the conditional order in response to a petition submitted by the Refugee Rights Project and the Hotline for Migrant Workers. The refugees, a third of whom escaped the massacre in Darfur, are being detained in accordance with the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which allows the court to critique the decision to detain refugees, and not in accordance the Entrance into Israel Law. A petition filed ten months ago maintains that short-term solutions were found for some refugees, but many have been detained for more than a year without any judicial interference, thus abusing the refugees' human right to liberty. "The ruling of this petition not only has consequences on this concrete affair but also on the State of Israel's handling of refugees in general and genocide victims specifically," said ttorney Dafna Holtz-Lechner. The prosecution said in response that "there is no concern that any of the refugees will be sent back to Sudan as long as it is life-threatening," adding that only three of the refugees are genocide victims from Darfur. "They are citizens of an enemy country infiltrating into Israel," said attorney Yochi Gensin of the prosecution, "since Sudan constitutes one of the global terror centers and serves as a training base for many of the Islamic terror organizations, and its government is connected with Al- Qaeda." The prosecution maintains that 64 of the Sudanese citizens were recognized by Egypt as UN refugees, 102 started the recognition process by the UN in Egypt as refugees, three have no UN documentation, and 43 have not been interviewed by UN representatives in Israel, and there is no further information about them. Fifty-four addition refugees are in various shelters throughout Israel, mostly in kibbutzim, out of 90 Sudanese citizens that were released in past months from detention.
