Italian Democracy Center Raises ‘Exceptional Gravity’ Concerns over Hannoun Arrest
By Palestine Chronicle Staff
CRED says the precautionary measures against Mohammed Hannoun raise “exceptional gravity” concerns due to reliance on evidence produced by Israel’s armed forces.
An Italian research center has issued a sharply worded statement raising concerns over the precautionary measures imposed on Palestinian activist Mohammed Hannoun and other individuals involved in solidarity work with Palestinians.
In a press release on Sunday, CRED (Center for Research and Elaboration for Democracy) said it was “expressing serious concerns regarding the precautionary measures issued against Mohammed Hannoun and other activists engaged in solidarity with the Palestinian population.”
According to CRED, the prosecutorial framework underlying the case contains “an element of exceptional gravity,” noting that “a significant portion of the charges is based on documentation produced by the Israeli army during military operations conducted in the Gaza Strip.”
The group warned that such materials appear to have been accepted “as documentary evidence without any effective assessment of neutrality, reliability, and verifiability.”
In its statement, CRED stressed that Israel “is neither a neutral actor nor merely a ‘party to a conflict,’” adding that it is “a State currently under scrutiny for genocide before the International Court of Justice and subject to binding provisional measures.”
“This legal reality,” the statement continued, “cannot be ignored when its armed forces generate evidentiary material intended to affect the personal liberty of citizens and residents in Italy.”
CRED further argued that documents produced by a military force actively involved in hostilities are generated “in a context radically incompatible with the guarantees of due process,” citing the “absence of adversarial proceedings” and their production “by a military apparatus directly involved in crimes under international investigation.”
“Their use,” the group said, “results in a serious slippage from judicial cooperation to the uncritical reception of military intelligence.”
Particular concern was raised over the treatment of humanitarian assistance activities. CRED described as “particularly alarming” the classification of such activities as “financing terrorism,” when this determination is based on the inclusion of beneficiary organizations on lists compiled by a foreign government.
“In this way,” the statement said, “political labeling replaces judicial fact-finding,” adding that if “the Israeli army designates an individual as a ‘relative of a terrorist,’ such a definition is adopted as a presupposition of criminal liability by an Italian judge, without any independent verification.”
The organization also warned against what it described as a retroactive reinterpretation of past activities, stating that the criminal action appears to “bend toward a unitary reinterpretation of more than twenty years of activity,” attempting to assign criminal relevance to conduct that had already been dismissed in previous proceedings.
CRED pointed to the introduction of alleged “new elements” supplied by the Israeli army after October 7, 2023, arguing that this has generated an “interpretative emergency climate” that overrides “the principles of legality and legal certainty.”
“What emerges,” the group concluded, “is a paradigmatic case of lawfare: the use of criminal law as the projection of an external political and military strategy,” warning that “the intelligence of a State accused of genocide ends up shaping the assessments of a court of the Italian Republic.”
Calling the situation “an institutional short circuit,” CRED said it risks compromising “the sovereignty of the judicial function.”
The organization urged the Italian judiciary to “rigorously uphold the principles of autonomy and independence,” stating that “criminal adjudication cannot be based on evidence produced by a military apparatus at war, nor on political labels.”
“At stake,” CRED concluded, “is not only the position of the accused, but the resilience of the rule of law and the increasingly fragile boundary between justice and juridical warfare.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)