Shadi Khoury, a 16 year old Palestinian youth was dragged  from his parents home in East Jerusalem by Israeli Occupation Forces in the early hours of the morning of Oct 18th 2022. There were no charges against him.

He along with 190 Palestinian children are being held as ‘security prisoners’ in Israeli military prisons, some have been held prisoner for six years or more. Shadi was initially held in the infamous detention and interrogation centre at the Russian Compound in Jerusalem.

Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections.

Shadi is a case among so many Palestinian children that are being harassed, tortured and imprisoned for no reason other than being a Palestinian seeking to live in dignity and freedom in their own country. 

Shadi Khoury's grandmother describes what happened.

“In the early hours of 18th October 2022 the Israeli occupation forces, consisting of a troop of around 12 army and secret service soldiers, stormed my son’s house after breaking the gate at the entrance of the compound in which we all live, so as to arrest his younger son (my grandson) Shadi Khoury, a sixteen-year-old child, a student at the Quakers Friends School in Ramallah. They beat him until he was bleeding all over the room and along the path on the way out of the house dragging him barefoot and blindfolded, not allowing the parents to see where the blood was coming from. Shadi was taken to the interrogation section in the police headquarters called 'the Russian compound'.

Shadi, a child, was “interrogated” without the presence of his parents or a lawyer, a tactic used systematically to terrorize children into submission, and ultimately using their own words to incriminate them. This Israeli State-sanctioned intimidation and persecution of children in the Palestinian Occupied Territory is common practice.

After Shadi's military court session (held in Hebrew, and not translated into Arabic), he and other young prisoners were transferred to Ramleh prison, outside the occupied West Bank and then moved to Damoun near Haifa, where his family, residents of occupied East Jerusalem, cannot travel to. It is here that Shadi is awaiting another military court trial. During his last day in the Russian Compound he was beaten because he was singing. 

Shadi and many Palestinian children are being detained inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year.

As an 89-year-old grandmother who has lived through the Nakba, the 1967 war, the first and second intifadas, Samia Khoury asks,

“Until when will this grave injustice go on? Because you care for human rights, and the rights of children, I am asking you to take action now and contact your parliament or local MP, to put an end to these grave injustices especially against our children as well as our whole population living under a brutal military occupation. Shadi should not be sleeping in a prison cell. He is a child and should be home with his family."

Together we can send a strong message to Australia's Foreign Minister, demanding the Australian Government stand by their obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Geneva Conventions and Rome Statute of the ICC, and pressure the Israeli Government to immediately release Shadi Khoury and all other unlawfully detained Palestinian child prisoners. 

#StandWithShadi   #FreePalestinianPrisoners   #FreeThemAll  #FreePalestine     #SoccerNotCells

Follow on Instagram @FreeShadi

If you live in Australia and care about children, this petition is for you. If you are outside Australia please write to your local representative, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Amnesty, or Human Rights Watch. Together we can achieve results!