Prisoners & Detainees
Ofer court extends Dima Barakat's detention for indictment despite heart attack
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's Ofer military court has repeatedly extended the detention of Dr. Dima Muhammad Amin Barakat — most recently by three days so military prosecutors could file an indictment — after the 54-year-old Ramallah gynecological surgeon suffered a heart attack in Israeli custody, according to court-hearing accounts reported by the Times of Israel.
Dr. Barakat underwent cardiac catheterization at a Jerusalem hospital and was returned to detention immediately afterward, the same accounts say. She has been held at the Russian Compound detention facility in Jerusalem.
The court record supplies what her family was never given on the morning of 18 August, when soldiers took her from her al-Tira home without stating a reason. Per the hearing accounts, she is suspected of incitement, support for a hostile organization and harming state security — over Facebook posts, with the judge citing posts the investigators presented as praise for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Two weeks into her detention, no indictment has been publicly announced, and the posts themselves have not been published by the court. Her first extension, five days for interrogation, came at Ofer on 20 August — two days after the arrest, and after the cardiac event.
The New Arab reported that her family did not know where she was for the first 36 hours, and quoted rights advocates who called the arrest part of an intimidation campaign against Palestinian health workers who speak publicly. Dr. Barakat had spoken out in the days before her arrest about the detention of a colleague — Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, the 71-year-old physician from the same Ramallah neighborhood held since June.
A doctor who had a heart attack in custody was catheterized in a Jerusalem hospital and returned to her cell the same day.
Court-hearing accounts reported by the Times of Israel
Medical Aid for Palestinians warned last week that attacks on Palestinian health workers in the West Bank are mounting, Arab News reported — a pattern into which her colleagues place this case. The Palestinian Medical Association has demanded an end to the targeting of medical personnel and her immediate release.
Dr. Barakat runs the Dunya Specialized Center for Women's Cancer in Ramallah and is known across the city as the surgeon who treats poor patients without payment. Times of Palestine continues to follow every hearing and extension in her case until she is home.
