Tamimi’s cousin, mother reach plea bargains as well ■ lawyer says agreement is proof army wanted to ‘settle scores’ ■ Deal awaits court’s approval
Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi reached a plea bargain with military prosecuction on Wednesday, according to which she will spend eight months in prison.
As part of the deal, the 17-year-old is expected to plead guilty to four counts of assault, including the videotaped slapping of an Israeli soldier.
The deal still must be approved by the military court, and is not final.
Tamimi has spent three months in detention so far.
The court has approved plea bargains for Nur and Nariman Tamimi, Ahed Tamimi’s cousin and mother, both of whom were involved in the videotaped soldier-slapping. Nur Tamimi agreed to a suspended sentence of five months. Nariman Tamimi will serve eight months in prison for participating the assault.
The decision was made in a hearing held today in Tamimi’s trial, which is being conducted behind closed doors. The military court rejected an appeal she made this week to hold the trial in public.
Tamimi’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, confirmed that a plea agreement has been reached. “The fact that the plea agreement provides for the dropping of all of counts of indictment that made her detention possible until the end of legal proceedings possible is proof that Tamimi’s arrest in the middle of the night, and that the legal proceedings against her were steps designed to settle scores,” Lasky said.
Sources told Haaretz that according to the plea bargain, Tamimi will be charged with the assault that was videotaped in December, the resulting incitement to violence through the posted video, and two other assaults on soldiers. She will not be charged of additional assaults or stone-throwing, which appeared on the original indictment.
According to the source, the punishment is not considered particularly lenient or particularly severe. The Israeli military felt the need to end the legal event, the source said, as it damaged the army’s reputation in the media and internationally, which may be why the plea bargain was intensively promoted.
Tamimi’s January indictment had 12 charges altogether, going back to 2016. The indictment included five counts of assault against security forces, including stone throwing. She was charged with assaulting a soldier, threatening a soldier, disrupting a soldier and inciting and throwing objects at a person or property.
Tamimi’s mother, Nariman Tamimi, was also charged for incitment on social media– she filmed the slapping incident– and for assault. Tamimi’s cousin, Nur, was indicted on charges of aggravated assault, though the army did not attribute her to any previous crimes.
Nur Tamimi said she and Ahed slapped the soldiers in partly because they invaded Ahed’s yard on December 15the day they were filmed – but the main reason was that they had just then read on Facebook that Mohammed had suffered an apparently mortal wound. He was shot a few dozen meters from Nur’s home.
Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, said that his wife and daughter have done nothing wrong and are “fighting for freedom and justice.”