Police officer Moshe Chen, who was wounded in his face and chest in a terrorist attack in 2015, in May asked Minister of Internal Security Omer Barlev not to permit the Israel Prisons Service to fund surgery to rehabilitate the nose of female terrorist Asraa Jabas, who carried out the attack in which Chen was injured, and was also injured during the attack.
The terrorist, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison, caused a gas cylinder to explode in a car. She has already been approved for two surgeries to rehabilitate her hands. Now she was asking the prison system to pay for a third operation, to rehabilitate her nose. She appealed to the Supreme Court, and the IPS told the court that her application was being re-examined.
Chen’s attorney wrote Minister Barlev in May: “My client is strongly opposed to this, it’s inconceivable that the lives of a police officer and his family were destroyed while the terrorist receives hundreds of thousands of shekels from the Israeli taxpayer’s money. To this day, my client is experiencing post-trauma and suffers from scars and burns, and instead of the Israel Police fighting to get funding for his surgeries, the system is fighting to help the terrorist who injured him?
“I demand that you devote all available resources to my client’s rehabilitation and not pay one penny for the terrorist beyond what she deserves by law,” the attorney insisted, adding that “my client demands as a victim of a crime to be informed about everything that’s progressing in the case, including every decision given to date, including the convening of a medical committee.”
Chen’s attorney on Monday received a reply from the IPS, stating: “The IPS insists that the medical treatment to be provided to prisoners, including the inmate in question, will only be in accordance with the requirements under the provisions of the Prisons Ordinance. That’s how we acted in the past and that is how we intend to continue to act.”
For the record, Israel’s Prisons Ordinance states that an inmate is entitled to medical care that’s required to maintain his or her health only, and not cosmetic treatments.
