Extrajudicial detention, Israel

The State of Israel has had various extrajudicial mechanisms, often termed preventive detention, through its modern history. Interpretation of this policy has changed through times and Governments. Originally, the authority derived from a colonial legacy, the British Mandatory Law.

Holocaust related

Extraordinary rendition, in a clandestine operation, was used to capture Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, but, once he was in Israel, was tried in a very public court proceeding. The actual detention was based on interpretations of universal jurisdiction and hostis humani generis. Note that this was in 1961, but the Rome Statute enabling the International Criminal Court, a current multinational venue for genocide prosecutions, went into force in 2002. Eichmann largely escaped Allied scrutiny in the late forties, although his activities were discussed during some of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, especially the Einsatzgruppen Case.

Recent security

Additional regulation passed in 1979, with the possibility of judicial review, but maintaining the authority of the Minister of Defense to order detention for renewable six-month periods.

As of 2002, Israeli authority for extrajudicial detention is the Imprisonment of Illegal Combatants Law, enacted in 2000 following a Supreme Court forbade the indefinite detention of Lebanese captives as "bargaining chips", as not meeting the security requirement of the administrative detention law of the time.

Haaretz, in February 2009, cited a Prisons Service spokesman as saying there were approximately 8,000 security prisoners, about 25% affiliated with Hamas. "All of them, no matter their organizational or political affiliation, are entitled to visits by their families and representatives of the Red Cross. Israel does not recognize the terrorists as prisoners of war but treats them in accordance with Geneva Convention principles concerning prisoners and civilians in occupied territories."