The Jerusalem District Court on Monday sentenced Medhat Issawi, 42, and his sister, Shireen Issawi, 37, both attorneys from eastern Jerusalem, to eight- and four-year prison terms respectively for harming state security. The two passed messages between security prisoners who were their clients, and the Hamas, to help include said clients in the list of security prisoners for the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal.
The deal, reached in 2011 between Israel and Hamas, netted the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Arab prisoners, 280 of whom were murderers with Jewish blood on their hands.
The illicit communications system was run by Shireen Issawi who set up the Al-Quds Office for Legal and Commercial Affairs together with her brother, Medhat. Both used to collect the coded letters from the prisoners in all the security prisons: Hadarim, Eshel, Megiddo, Ofer, Shata, Nafta and Ashkelon, and pass them on, Walla reported.
The firm built up a network of eastern Jerusalem attorneys, who all benefited from their preferred status as Israeli citizens, and sent them on assignments inside the prisons. The attorneys were paid by the letter. One of the accused attorneys, Amjad Safadi, who hanged himself in his home two weeks after being served with an indictment, told investigators, ” Shireen Issawi paid me for the visits, 500 shekel (about $128) for each visit, part in cash, part by check.”
“First Shireen would pay and then Medhat Issawi, Shireen’s brother, did,” Safadi confessed, adding, “I earned about 5,500 shekel (about $1,400) every month, and in all of 2013 about 66,000 shekels (about $17,000). I consented, because at the time I needed the money and as far as I was concerned, this was legal work, suitable for an attorney. Then I began to work with them in their office, the Al-Quds Office for Legal and Commercial Affairs … I would write the names of the prisoners I visited each day … and he (Medhat Issawi) gave me 16,000 shekel (about $4,100) as my first payment.”
The case was exposed as a result of intelligence gathered on the Issawi firm. The intelligence led to a covert investigation that lasted several months. Eight indictments altogether were served, six against attorneys and two against office managers, for contact with a foreign agent, giving service to an illegal association, and violations of the prohibition on using property for terrorist purposes.
According to Tareq Issawi, the patriarch of the Issawi family in Isawiyah, outside the Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem, who spoke to Ha’aretz in 2014, the Issawi family has rarely been able to all be together in one place, because one of them is always in an Israeli prison.
Tareq told Ha’aretz that Medhat dealt with more than 250 prisoners from every terror organizations, not necessarily just from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. That’s upwards of at least $32,000 in fees to the firm if each prisoner were visited just one time. Medhat was also involved in the transfer of money to the prisoners, so they could buy items in the prison commissary — which the brother and sister team insisted was the only purpose of those money exchanges.
Shireen studied law at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem and was licensed by the Israel Bar Association. She was already convicted of a similar offense, sentenced to a year in prison in a plea bargain, and had her law license temporarily suspended.