Sending Them to Their Death

November 24, 2010

Yediot Ahronot

By Einat Fischbein 

A. didn’t even think he was disobeying an order. “I’m taking them to the base,” he announced plainly on the radio to the company commander.  A. contacted his commander after he took into his vehicle a group of Africans that had crossed the border during the night between Friday and Saturday. Even when the man on the other end of the line informed him that he was to take the 13 Africans to a different location on the border and put place them on the Egyptian side, A. did not change his decision. 

He asked to speak to the company commander, certain that if he could only explain himself, the Africans would be at the base within minutes and he would be able to return to his routine missions. But several minutes later A. was sent to the base on his own. At the order of the company commander, the Africans were taken out of the vehicle, loaded onto other vehicles, and from there continued on to the border. He tried to talk to them, to explain to them where they were being taken, but they were unable to understand him. Even now, as he awaits a disciplinary hearing for having refused an order, he has no idea what became of them. 

A., an officer in the reserves, is, as far as we know, the first soldier to refuse to carry out an order according to the “Hot Return” procedure, alleging that this was a patently illegal order and that as far as he knew, returning them to Egypt placed their lives at risk. “Hot Return” — sending refugees from Africa back to Egypt as soon as they are caught on the border — is currently and has been for the past three years under deliberation by the High Court of Justice. The state’s official position is that the procedure does not exist, aside from a handful of unique incidents and under properly defined conditions. 

An article in Yediot Ahronot’s supplemental section from last Friday reveals that return to their homeland is not the only potential danger facing those seeking asylum on the Israeli-Egyptian border. The rape and torture many of them undergo in Sinai itself, by the smugglers, in an effort to squeeze thousands of dollars out of them— makes Egypt an immediate danger for them. 

“I was personally told about more than 30 women who were raped in the desert over the past year and a half,” Masrat Psahiya from the Hotline for Migrant Workers tells Yedioth Ahronoth. “About one in every two women is raped. Men undergo abuse that is no less difficult including beatings and torture. I met someone who was stabbed with a razor in the groin area, and he was in shackles there for several months.” 

The Sudanese Tree

A., a student of behavioral studies and management, serves as an officer in a reservist infantry unit. He has never been involved in political activity or human rights issues, and this is the first time in his life that he took any action of this kind. He says that he feels that he was given an order he could not implement. This was also the first and only time he was sent to the Egyptian border. He learned the procedure of collecting the asylum seekers from the border only in the days prior to the incident. 

“Friday morning we caught a group of 31 people,” he recounts. “There were five or six women and one small girl, an 11 month old baby. One of the women was holding her crotch in an unusual fashion, and she had the look of death in her eyes. The others also had this look. They were Sudanese and Eritrean, some were barefoot, some with shirts tied around their feet instead of shoes, without any gear. We loaded them on the Hummer in two batches and took them to the company. I saw the smiles on their faces when the two groups reunited. It was a kind smile that said ‘it’s over, the disaster is behind us, perhaps we can start something new.’ I think this is what caused me to disobey an order that night.” 

However, that night A. realized that something else was about to occur. “Before dinner the battalion commander responsible for that sector arrived and explained what was going to be done,” he recalls. “It was all said very quietly. He said they were going to catch the group that would arrive later in the night and bring them back to a spot in Egypt. Nearly every night refugees arrive. He said that just the other night he had returned a couple. From this I ascertained that it was not a one-time incident.” 

That very night, A. recalls, there were a great deal of forces on the border. “I was the patrol officer along with a driver and two other soldiers and there was another patrol round. They were stopped after they crossed the border, I closed the road and then we drove to the ‘Sudanese tree’ (the tree around which all the groups caught crossing the border are assembled before being send to the detention facility). There were 13 men, I think from Sudan, ‘though I’m not quite sure. They were divided among the three vehicles, five sat in mine. I planned on bringing them to the company like I did in the morning, I reported on the radio that I would be there in a few minutes, and then the company commander’s radio operator told me ‘you’re not going to the company — you’re going to ---- (the number on the border fence, as ordered by the battalion commander earlier).' 

“Once I heard this I asked that the convoy come to a halt and that I be allowed to talk to the company commander. I asked him to get out of the car and speak to me face to face and I told him that I was not prepared to do this, that I wanted them to be taken to the company. It was a short conversation, I phoned and woke up my battalion commander, but in the end the company commander ordered me to return to company headquarters and he divided up the refugees I was carrying among the other vehicles. They did what they were told. I tried to tell them in English that that they were being returned to Egypt, but I’m not sure they understood. I drove away. Afterwards I heard on the radio that the ‘incident was over.’ I don’t know precisely what took place.” 

Already three years ago a petition was filed with the High Court of Justice on behalf of the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Tel Aviv University’s refugee assistance program, asking that the “Hot Return” procedure be dismissed as illegal. They allege that returning the refugees to Egypt constitutes a genuine threat to the asylum seekers, mostly because Egypt allows them to be deported to countries like Sudan and Eritrea, where their lives are at risk. In February this year the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) presented to the High Court of Justice a report that states unequivocally: Israel violates international law by returning asylum seekers to Egypt through the “Hot Return” procedure. 

While deliberations in the High Court of Justice continue, the Attorney General has ordered that the procedure be allowed under limited conditions that require a detailed investigation of each refugee, and allow immediate deportation only in the event that he or she is not seeking asylum. The procedure, referred to as “coordinated return” mandates the existence of translators and filling in forms. According to A., none of this took place. […]