Court upholds dismissal of charges over alleged Gaza abuse

mbl.is reports that Iceland’s Court of Appeal has upheld the dismissal of charges over alleged offences by a Palestinian father in Gaza, while a district court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison for offences against his wife and children in Iceland.

The man had threatened to kill his wife if she greeted men, a threat made a week before she arrived in Iceland with their five children. She said she believed family reunification was her only chance to save the children from the war in Gaza. Within a week of arriving, she had fled their home and sought refuge at a women’s shelter.

The district court found that the man had abused the children, threatened to send his wife out of the country without them, and sent relatives abroad photographs of one daughter without a headscarf, accompanied by derogatory comments about the mother and daughters. He cited culture and rules about the behaviour of married women in explaining his conduct.

According to the ruling, the threatening situation continued until he was remanded in custody a year after the family arrived.

The Gaza indictment accused him, among other things, of repeatedly raping one daughter from the age of six or seven and another when she was five. The Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal because there was not enough information about which criminal laws applied in Gaza at the time or whether the alleged conduct was punishable there.