Israel Rejects Parole For Spanish Aid Worker Juana Ruiz

Israel rejects parole for Spanish aid worker Juana Ruiz

An Israeli board on Tuesday refused to grant conditional release to humanitarian worker Juana Ruiz, sentenced to thirteen months in prison for working and raising funds for a Palestinian NGO, which Israel considers illegal, as reported by its legal team to EFE.

The defense requested this measure for Ruiz, 63 years old and imprisoned since April, after she was sentenced by a military court on November 17 after accepting a plea agreement to lower the sentence. Due to the sentence imposed and given the time she has been serving, the Spanish humanitarian worker would serve her sentence in May and would be released upon payment of half a fine of 14,000 euros.

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The Defense will appeal this decision taken by the Board, with two votes against freedom and one in favor, in the Court of Nazareth, in northern Israel. Session in which there has been diplomatic representation of the Embassy of Spain in Israel.

Ruiz was arrested in April near Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, for her work in the Work for Health Committees, an NGO that Israel accuses of diverting funds to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), considered a terrorist group. also for the European Union (EU) and the United States. When she was detained without charge, Ruiz was charged in May with five crimes that, with the agreement reached with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, were reduced to two: “rendering services to an illegal organization” and “receiving money and illegally introducing it” in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli Government linked his case with that of the other six Palestinian NGOs, declared terrorists by Israel in October for similar allegations, which the Israeli military court had to clarify, since the plea agreement, accepted by Ruiz, did not admit it.

The Ruiz case has attracted international attention because it is a military process and because of the allegations of terrorist financing by NGOs that receive European funds and that Israel assures that they are a “civil arm” of the PFLP. The UN and the EU have requested “evidence” from Israel, considering that the information presented so far is not “sufficient”.

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