Author: Khaled Abu Toameh
Publication: Newsweek
Date: August 7, 2002
It was just before 10.A.M. and the
first ministers were beginning to arrive at the mukattah compound for an
emergency cabinet meeting to be chaired by Yasser Arafat. The Israeli tanks,
bulldozers and armored personnel carriers, which have been inside the mukattah
for the past few weeks, pulled back a few hundred meters south of the compound
to allow the meeting to take place.
The journalists are told by some
PA officials that the cabinet meeting is expected to last for a few hours.
Some cameramen find shelter from the sun in the shade of a nearby building.
Others, including myself, decide to take a look around the area. We walk
a few meters south of Arafat's office and run into what was once the headquarters
of the PA's mukhabarat, or General Intelligence. The building has been
completely destroyed. We head further south and run into a group of young
men, some armed with pistols and AK 47 rifles, sitting and chatting under
a tree.
Behind them is a small building
surrounded with barbed wires. On top of the big green gate is a sign in
Arabic which reads: "Ramallah Correctional Center." This is the prison
where Palestinian inmates were held. Most were moved to secret locations
after the IDF arrived.
Suddenly two policemen in plainclothes
emerge from the prison. One of them is "embracing" a young, bearded men
dressed in jeans and a white T shirt. The young man's face is badly swollen
and it looks as if he needs to see a dentist immediately.
He passes by and looks me straight
in the eye, as if he is trying to tell me something. Although he was not
handcuffed, he did look like a suspect who was probably on his way to interrogation.
None of the cameramen or reporters standing under Arafat's second floor
office paid attention to the three as they passed by.
In my heart I felt something was
wrong. It must have been the strange look in the eyes of the young man.
It's a look that will continue to haunt me for many years. I felt as if
this young man with a pale face was begging for help. I decided to follow
him and see where he is being taken. The two men took him to the back of
a three story building north of Arafat's office. If Arafat was watching
from the window, he would have seen it all.
What happened next is hard to describe.
The "suspect," in his early twenties, was blindfolded and made to stand
against a wall. Three policemen standing about three meters away sprayed
him with bullets from their rifles. He was hit in the head and chest and
fell to the ground. One of the policemen then walked up to him and fired
one more shot into his head. "Take him away," came the order from another
police officer.
I couldn't believe what my eyes
were seeing. The executioners did not notice that I was watching. When
the rest of the journalists heard the shots they rushed towards the area
to see what was happening. Some thought that Israeli soldiers had stormed
the compound.
Nervous policemen charged at the
cameras and reporters and ordered them to leave the area.
I asked a police officer what had
happened and he replied, "A criminal has been executed. what's the big
deal?"
"What did he do?" I asked another
police officer who was trying to block cameras with his hand. "He murdered
two elderly women and raped his grandmother," he answered. "Was he ever
tried?" I asked. "I don't know, but the President [Arafat] this morning
approved the execution.
An ambulance belonging to the Palestinian
Red Crescent that had been waiting nearby took the young man's body away
before anyone had a chance to see it. As the ambulance was leaving, more
ministers continued to arrive for the meeting in their black Mercedese
and Audis. I asked three of them if they had heard about the execution
which just took place a few meters away the hall where they were planning
to meet, and all replied that they had no idea what I was talking about.
A few hours later the PA confirmed
that the execution did take place, identifying the victim as Bashir Attari.
Palestinians described him as mentally retarded.
Klaus Lofgren, the Middle East correspondent
for a Swedish TV station who was standing only a few meters away from the
site, was still in shock even after we arrived back in Jerusalem. "This
is a surrealistic experience," he said. "To execute someone in a place
where the representatives of the world media are standing and where the
cabinet is meeting is unprecedented. I have never heard of a case like
this and it shows the cultural gap between the Palestinian society and
most of the world."
(The reporter, Khaled Abu Toameh,
is an Arab whose articles appear regularly in the Jerusalem Report magazine,
as well as Newsweek.)
