District Court - Health Problems, Interrogation of Witness
Translation: Marganit W.
District Court, Jerusalem
Once Again: Prison instead of Psychological Treatment
The hearing at the District Court was presided by Justice Yoram Noam.
The detainee is Aisha Afghani, a 36-year old single woman from Ras-al-Amoud neighborhood in Jerusalem.
She was arrested on 25.12.16.
Atty. Mahmoud Rabah of the Public Defender Office represents her.
Aisha’s parents, each in his/her turn, testified before the court.
They described her bizarre behavior since she was 17. They asserted that she has mental problems that went largely untreated. Only once did the parents take her to a clinic.
The father called her Satan.
They seemed very angry with her: she invented stories about a brother, she caused friction between the mother and her daughters-in-law, she lied to an aunt in Amman, and she lied that she had cancer.
The mother testified that her sister in Amman insists that Aisha has mental issues and needs treatment, but nothing has ever been done.
Two grandmothers lived in the house: the mother’s mother died in 2007 and the father’s mother is still alive. The father testified that his mother is totally incapacitated and cannot even go to the bathroom. Aisha was the one charged with taking care of the grandmothers. Although they were aware of Aisha’s mental problems, the parents turned her into a slave; they had no compunctions about entrusting the care of the grandmothers into her hands.
On 25.12.16 Aisha got fed up with her life. She grabbed a knife and went to the Old City.
A video taken on the site, as well as things she said to her mother, indicate that Aisha wanted to kill herself by confronting a soldier or a policeman.
A note she had left was read in court: “Tell mom that now she can have peace, the Satan you had living in your home is gone.
A testimony by a police investigator was cited, in which he tells the father: It’s lucky that Aisha is alive: she could have gotten killed. The father responded: It would have been better if they had killed her. He claimed he meant that all this suffering could have been prevented, but he added that they had never been in court before and were not involved in politics- in other words the shame is that they now have a daughter in jail.
The prosecutor and the defense will present their summations and the verdict will be given on 8.2.18.
The attorney told me that Aisha is facing long incarceration.