• The facts The Spanish aid worker Juana Ruiz faces an Israeli military trial after four months in prison

  • The defense The lawyer of the Spanish woman detained without charge by Israel: "She is suffering a lot"

  • The Israeli prosecution accuses a Spanish aid worker of a Palestinian NGO in a case of terrorist financing

The Israeli military court of the Ofer prison in the West Bank has started the trial against the Spanish aid worker

Juana Ruiz Sánchez

(62 years old), who three months ago was formally accused, among other charges, of belonging to an "illegal organization".

Ruiz Sánchez, who has lived in the West Bank since the mid-1980s and married to the Palestinian

Elias Rishmawi

, was arrested on April 13 at her home in Beit Sahur after an investigation by the security service (

Shin Beit

) into a financing scheme. terrorist in Palestinian territory.

According to

Shin Beit

, the Palestinian NGO he has worked for for almost 30 years - Health Works Committees (HWC) - diverted funds from abroad to finance activities of

the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

(

PFLP).

), considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

The Hispanic-Palestinian, who entered the room handcuffed, denied the accusations in the brief and formal beginning of the trial.

For the next hearing, scheduled for September 1, his lawyer

Avigdor Feldman

has requested an interpreter, absent this Tuesday, since he only speaks Arabic and Spanish.

Until then, the Israeli lawyer hopes to be able to analyze all the information presented and new details of the accusation he is requesting.

"There are no grounds for his incarceration"

"This is an unfounded accusation and part of Israel's attempts to criminalize all external humanitarian activities and organizations in the occupied territories," the Israeli lawyer denounced.

This veteran human rights activist in Israel has announced that he will request the house arrest of the aid worker since, in his opinion, "there is no reason for her to remain in jail."

Feldman, his third lawyer in four months, replaces

Gaby Lasky

after she became a deputy for the left-wing

Meretz

party

in the Israeli Parliament.

"Good luck, we are all with you," her husband told her, according to the

Efe

agency on Tuesday

.

Concerned about her health, she added that she was "so tired that she can't stand up."

Rishmawi, who claimed his innocence, was in Ofer together with representatives of the Spanish Consulate in Jerusalem.

Among the five charges filed by the Prosecutor's Office is "receiving money for a false purpose."

According to Israeli sources, "PFLP uses NGOs like HWC as cover to receive money from European countries for all kinds of actions such as terrorist attacks."

The accusation

She, they add, was "a central figure in raising funds from abroad that ended up in the terrorist group PPLP."

They believe that he was aware of the link between his NGO and the PFLP and cite the financial director

Walid Hanatshe

accused by Israel of an attack by PFLP two years ago, which killed an Israeli teenager in the West Bank.

Feldman rejects any relationship between the PFLP and the Spanish company, which has been working on cooperation and assistance projects for the Palestinians since the 1980s. HWC also denies the accusations, claiming that she was detained without knowing the charges and replies that the funds received abroad go exclusively to its humanitarian and health projects in the territories occupied by Israel in the war of '67.

In recent months, Israel and Spain have held talks on this case, one of the topics in the conversation between their foreign ministers,

Yair Lapid

and José Manuel Albares, respectively, at the end of July.

Last week, the High Representative for European Foreign Policy,

Josep Borrell

, pointed out that the EU is following the case of the Spanish citizen detained and tried by Israel in the West Bank while denying the general accusation that European funds destined for Palestinian NGOs are diverted in Palestine. to tasks outside humanitarian work.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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