Forging ahead with new court cases

After two weeks in the criminal courts, my colleague Haneen Dajani thought it would be good for me to be introduced to the other courts. So today we went to the State Security Court.I expected it to be pretty much like a regular court. But it soon became clear it was not.

The cases are (obviously) to do with state security – including forged documents and passports, arms dealing, and terrorism.

The first thing I noticed was the huge number of prisoners in the hearings. There were two women and about 20 men, most of whom were either Asian or African. Most were accused of forging special documents or passports.

It was harder to understand what was going on since the cases were a bit different than what I was used to. In the criminal courts we had reports on the cases, which made them easier for us to follow. Here, no such luck.

Still, today's cases were mostly humdrum. Hopefully next time there will be something more exciting.