Israel frees 12-year-old Palestinian girl charged with planning to stab guard
A 12-year-old Palestinian girl who had been charged with planning to stab a guard was released from an Israeli jail on Sunday, April 24.
Dima al-Wawi — the youngest known Palestinian prisoner held in an Israeli jail — was released early because of her age, according to Israeli prison service spokesman Assaf Librati, as reported by The New York Times.
Family and friends welcomed her return in a West Bank village where she was given a hero's welcome, complete with banners from the Fatah party and Hamas. Al-Wawi said she's happy that she is now out of prison.
"Prison is bad," she told The Associated Press. "During my time in prison I missed my classmates and friends and family."
Al-Wawi was arrested on Feb. 9 after a foiled attempt to stab an Israeli security guard in a West Bank settlement. Witnesses said the guard ordered her to stop while a resident told her to lie on the ground and surrender the knife she was carrying under her shirt. She pleaded guilty to the charges in court.
Al-Wawi said she was interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or her parents and claimed that her feet had been bound with shackles while authorities questioned her. However, she found prison to be "fine" because she was able to play with other girls.
Offenders caught in the West Bank are treated differently than those caught in East Jerusalem. In the West Bank, Palestinians as young as 12 years old, if convicted of crime, can go to jail. On the other hand, for the Israelis, only those older than 14 years old can be sentenced to prison.
As of December 2015, there were 422 incarcerated Palestinian minors in Israel, according to a document released by Defense for Children International-Palestine. Of these, around 100 were below 15 years old.
