A video showing excerpts of an Israeli interrogation session with jailed Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi was released to the public on Monday.
At a press conference in Ramallah, Tamimi’s family made the footage public in order to show tactics used by Israeli authorities to elicit confession from the teenager at Shaar Binyamin detention center in the occupied West Bank on December 26.
The video showed a portion of a more than two-hour interrogation session with the minor, who garnered international attention after being detained and sentenced to eight months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier.
The Israeli interrogators used verbal threats and intimidation techniques to coerce Ahed into cooperating with Israeli authorities, according to the video.
Israeli interrogators are seen commenting on Ahed’s light skin. “My little sister is blonde and her eyes are like yours,” one of the interrogators said in the video, and asked Tamimi if her skin also turned red when she goes to the beach.
These tactics were used “just to get her to interact with the interrogators,” Bassem Tamimi, her father, told reporters at the conference.
“This defiance is the message of our new generation. The single purpose of this interrogation was to break the symbolism of defiance that she represents by trying to have her let go of her right to remain silent. She did not,” the father added.
Because Ahed is a minor, Israeli authorities are required to hand over excerpts of footage of interrogations to her lawyer upon request. Her family later decided to make public excerpts of the video they had been provided.
Ahed’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, filed a complaint with the Israeli general attorney last Monday in light of the footage showing the interrogator telling the teen she has “eyes like an angel”.
Lasky has accused the interrogators of sexual harassment amounting to a “gross violation of the law”, made worse in light of Ahed’s age.
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