New Bill would prevent suspects from terror lawyer for the year (Jerusalem Post)

  
12/13/2010 19: 23 A law that would enable suspects of terrorism to be held for up to one year without having access to a lawyer after a first vote in Committee of the Knesset from Monday morning. The Bill, sponsored by Department of Public Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Israel Beiteinu) extends the amount of time that prison may terminate visits a lawyer to a person suspected of terror from three weeks to six months at a time, for a period of one year.

The prison authorities were given the opportunity to stop visits between lawyers and detained since 2005, if they can prove that there was "a suspected serious meetings with a specific lawyer would enable the implementation of a criminal offence which would endanger the safety of a person, public safety, the safety of the State or security prison. The new Bill would significantly lengthen the duration of a suspect prisoner may be behind bars without counsel.

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"Prisons service takes exercises dealing with all of the scenarios.

The move was violently by civil rights organizations. The Association for civil rights in Israel, who filed a brief with the Department of public safety in opposition to the Bill, he called a "contradiction with the constitutional principles of clear."

"These draconian measures are already extremely harmful to right of the prisoner to consult his lawyer of his choice," said Lila Margalit, a lawyer of the ACRI.

ACRI has warned that the new Bill would open the door for abuse of prisoners, holding them for excessively long periods of time without sufficient evidence used visits with their lawyer to plan illegal activities.

Office expressed confidence of the Aharonovitch Bill would pass the readings of the Knesset, with the first reading is expected in the coming weeks. Its quoted that we found a "concern" that some lawyers have been profiting from meetings with prisoners to coordinate terrorism intelligence reports.  "You can't exploit democracy for the activity of terror," Eido Minkovsky Aharonovitch, spokesman told the post.

Minkovsky thoughts were taken over by Meir Indor, head of the al-Magor, an organization that helps the families of the victims of terrorist attacks. "For us, it is preferable, even if it causes harm, that a man cannot see his lawyer rather than another man will die," he said. "It's like in a war, where you have to tolerate crimes to win the war." "It would be criminal to keep a suspect to meet with a lawyer, but you must keep in mind the overall objective is the security and safety of terrorism".

The decision to refuse a lawyer of a prisoner who was suspected of terrorism continue to advocate is the Director of a prison. Currently a Director of the prison can interrupt a lawyer during up to 24 hours, that the new Bill would extend up to 96 hours. Now, Commissioner of Services Prison with the permission of the Attorney General may extend in order to retain a lawyer for five days, and a district court may prohibit visits by a lawyer up to 21 days. In the new Bill, with permission, the Commissioner may extend the order up to 14 days, and the courts could extend to the order of six months at a time, until a period of one year.

Minkovsky said they hope to expand the Bill to include the retention of counsel for suspects involved in organized crime, that they might be passing on information to the outside.

Bill was approved by the Ministerial Committee for legislation on Monday, which means it has supported in the coalition. Although Bill must still pass three separate readings in the Knesset, the initial load is usually sufficient to ensure the passage of the Bill through the process. The Court Supreme challenges should if the Bill becomes law.