A Response to the Palestinian Attorney General, Mr. Al-Mughanni

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I listened carefully to the interview given by Counselor Ahmad al-Mughanni, the Attorney General, to Watan TV, broadcast on 2 January 2012, which I have recorded as a document that can be produced at any venue or in any court. Mr. al-Mughanni spoke about a number of issues, and was, for the most part, defensive — failing in his defense on several points, including matters relating to the program “Watan on a String,” the promotions of public prosecution staff, and the summoning of people for interrogation on Thursdays.

The broadcaster Wafa asked him about my most recent detention order, and he answered by describing my detention order from 2009. Is he trying to dodge the question, or does he simply not know? I cannot say. Mr. al-Mughanni said that Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem was detained because of complaints filed against him by security agencies and by individuals whom he had accused of being agents and spies. He said I was summoned, and that I confessed.

Your Excellency the Counselor:

I was not summoned. I went to the Nablus police myself to file a complaint against people who identified themselves over the phone and hurled insults and abuse at me following an interview I gave to Al-Aqsa TV about the shooting of Sheikh Hamed al-Beitawi. I published the text of that interview, together with the photograph, publicly, more than once. I did not accuse anyone of collaboration; I only quoted what the Zionist Avi Dichter had said about certain Palestinian leaders (not ordinary individuals working within security agencies) who cooperate with Zionist intelligence. I did not name a single name.

No one summoned me — I went in to file a complaint, and I told the police that Preventive Security had sent me a message asking me to appear at their headquarters the next day, that is, on 21 April 2009. The moment I said this to the officer who was supposed to be hearing my complaint, Waddah al-Sha’er, he leapt up from his chair and left the room. He returned about a quarter of an hour later to tell me there were complaints against me. Suddenly — glory be to God — complaints piled up against me, and I found myself detained. I later learned that the Nablus Attorney General, Mr. Baha’ al-Ahmad, had signed the order for my detention.

Where is my confession, Your Excellency the Attorney General? If you bring me the confession, I pledge to silence my tongue and my pen forever. And if it turns out that you said what you said without knowledge, or out of slander, what will you do?

And if I had truly confessed, then why did the court go on to issue a ruling acquitting me of every charge? You appealed against me, and you lost.

…on account of my assessment of the state of justice in Palestine. I was aware that I would be detained. I was interrogated by Mr. Khaled al-Khafsh, who tried very hard to find some word that might place me within the circle of guilt, but I was extremely careful, from a legal standpoint, in how I worded my statements.

A request was made to Judge Imad Thabet to detain me for fifteen days, and he agreed. Strangely, my file before the judge did not contain my authorization for my lawyer. My lawyer rushed to the Nablus prosecution office to look for the authorization and came back in a hurry. He reached the court at around 2:30, but the judge postponed the decision on releasing me on bail until Sunday, 28 August 2011. My statement did not appear in the case file that Sunday, so the judge postponed the decision to the following day. I began to sense that the goal was to keep me in custody until Eid al-Fitr had passed. It was no surprise, then, that Dr. Salam Fayyad and Mr. Abu Mazen intervened to put a stop to this.

I left prison, Your Excellency the Counselor, at 23:40, just before midnight, on 28 August 2011. And when the judge decided to release me on bail on 29 August 2011, I was already standing atop Mount Nablus, looking out over a Palestine whose own sons are winding the rope around her neck. Naturally, I filed a complaint against the judge with the Supreme Judicial Council, and to this day I do not know what came of it.

If you are truly applying the law governing complaints, then why did you not detain those against whom I filed a complaint on 25 August 2011? We later reconciled at the university, and each side dropped its case, and the matter ended there — but I must tell Your Excellency that you summoned me following a complaint filed against me, yet you never summoned those against whom I had filed a complaint, even though the statement they wrote against me implicates them absolutely. I am prepared to send Your Excellency a copy of it so that you may verify this for yourselves.

The Nablus Magistrate’s Court issued a ruling on 10 October 2011 acquitting me of all public-right charges.

My detention was an assault on my freedom to write and to publish, and an assault on my family, who suffered because of it. Detention itself does not trouble me — my prison bag is always packed and ready on my shoulder — but this is a violated homeland that cannot bear any further degradation.

Your Excellency the Counselor:

I demand a public apology. And if that proves too difficult for you, I will take my complaint against you first to God, and then to the Supreme Judicial Council. Your Excellency is responsible for upholding justice, and it is not befitting of your office to say what you do not know, to confuse illusion with fact, or to slander.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “رد على المدعي العام الفلسطيني السيد المغني” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.