Israel accuses the Spanish aid worker Juana Ruiz of belonging to a terrorist financing scheme

Juana Ruiz Sánchez, the Spanish aid worker detained without charge by Israel for almost two weeks.Family of Juana Ruiz Sánchez

The Spanish humanitarian worker Juana Ruiz Sánchez, 62, will remain isolated in a prison cell near Tel Aviv after being accused this Thursday before a military court of belonging to an illegal organization involved in the financing of a terrorist group. At the same time that the aid worker heard the charges for the first time after being arrested in the early morning of April 13 in the West Bank, the Israeli government claimed to have dismantled a plot that diverted funds from European cooperation.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry released a report from the Shin Bet (internal intelligence service) on the financing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), classified as a terrorist organization, from NGOs that receive international aid, such as that of Juana Ruiz.

An Israeli security official quoted by Reuters raised to "millionaire figures" the amount of funds diverted from donors in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom or the European Union, among other sources.

Legal and diplomatic sources who attended the Ofer prison and court (in the West Bank, about 20 kilometers north of Jerusalem), to the appearance by telematic means of the Spanish citizen, specified that among the five accusations filed against her, no mention was made of expressly the term terrorism.

The lawyer for the aid worker, Israeli lawyer of Mexican origin Gabi Lasky, reported that most of the accusations referred to her membership of the Palestinian NGO Committees for Health Work (CTS), which Israel now calls "illegal" .

Military forces stormed the headquarters of this health organization in Ramallah in March, where they made arrests and seized files and computer records.

Based in Palestine since 1984, Juana Ruiz has worked for decades at CTS, where she coordinates the cooperation of Spanish associations and entities on health matters in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

She is married to a Palestinian pharmacist and lives in Beit Sahur, in the province of Bethlehem, where she was arrested in the middle of the night by about twenty soldiers.

As a Palestinian resident, she has been subjected to Israeli military jurisdiction, which allows detention for interrogation for up to 75 days without the need to press charges.

His lawyer has announced that in the appearance before the military judge scheduled for Monday he will request his release from prison, or that he can at least go to the situation of house arrest, during the process.

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• An Israeli military court extends the detention without charges of a Spanish aid worker for another week

Shin Bet investigators maintain that the Spanish humanitarian worker - cited in the Hebrew press as Juani Rashmawi, by her married name - participated in a network to “illegally smuggle funds into the Palestinian territories” that were diverted to the PFLP “through fraud. and cheating ”on donors from European countries.

Legal and diplomatic observers who have closely followed his case maintain that the minimum procedural guarantees have not been respected, and that Israel has breached the Vienna Convention on consular assistance, since his detention was not communicated from the beginning to the diplomatic authorities. Spanish.

Juana Ruiz has been isolated in a cell throughout her detention without being able to leave the courtyard of the Hasharon men's prison (north of Tel Aviv) where she is being held.

She has been subjected to interrogations for up to six hours, and for two weeks she received only two meals a day, instead of the three prescribed in the Israeli prison regulations.

In a situation that the sources consulted describe as "psychological and psychic pressure", he has only been able to receive two visits from a Spanish consular officer in three weeks.

It also took 17 days for him to receive the personal effects that the family wanted to give him.

Meanwhile, he could not change into his personal clothes or have his reading glasses.

Although she looked better at the court appearance on Thursday, according to the testimony of assistants, the Spanish aid worker, who must take medication for a chronic illness, has been mired in a depressed state due to her prolonged detention and permanent isolation.

He has had to sign documents in Hebrew, a language he does not know, without the presence of an interpreter, diplomatic sources reveal.

Representatives of the European cooperation with Palestine in Jerusalem fear that through the extensive operation of the Shin Bet and the Army in which Juana Ruiz has been detained, an attempt is being made to send a warning to foreign “bothersome witnesses”.

It is the first time in recent times that a person with exclusive Spanish citizenship receives the inflexible treatment that the Israeli military justice has systematically applied for 53 years to residents of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Guarantee audits in cooperation

In a statement released by the solidarity campaign with the Spanish aid worker, 80 Spanish organizations working in cooperation with Palestine have denounced that the charges brought against Juana Ruiz and her colleagues in the NGO Committee for Health Work are "inconceivable". "We categorically deny that the money from Spanish cooperation is used in anything other than health and humanitarian projects in Palestine," reads the text, which highlights the full coordination that has existed for 30 years with CTS. "Spanish cooperation is extremely guaranteeing", they maintain, and is subject to successive management and budgetary control audits. "Any modification must be immediately communicated and approved by the institution (donor)."

According to information provided by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs - in which concrete evidence is not made public - the Shin Bet uncovered a plot to divert funds from European cooperation, through "false projects and documents, inflated invoices, and bank receipts with forged signatures ”, among other irregularities, towards the FPLP party, to which it considers that the NGO of the Spanish humanitarian worker is closely linked.