DaysofPal- The Italian Center for Research and Treatment for Democracy (CRED) has expressed serious concern over precautionary measures issued against Mohammed Hannoun and other activists involved in solidarity work with the Palestinian people, warning that the legal proceedings rely heavily on Israeli military documents lacking judicial credibility.
In a statement issued amid a solidarity demonstration for the Gaza Strip, CRED said the structure of the prosecution reveals an “exceptionally dangerous” legal problem, noting that a significant portion of the allegations is based on documents produced by the Israeli army during military operations carried out in Gaza.
CRED stressed that these materials were treated as documentary evidence despite having “no real value” in terms of third-party neutrality, reliability, or verifiability.
It emphasized that the Israeli occupation “is not a neutral party nor merely a party to a conflict,” but a state currently under investigation for genocide before the International Court of Justice and subject to binding provisional measures.
“This legal reality cannot be ignored when materials produced by its armed forces are used to restrict the personal freedom of citizens and residents in Italy ” CRED said.
It added that the documents were generated in a context fundamentally incompatible with fair-trial guarantees, citing the absence of adversarial process and their production by a military apparatus directly implicated in crimes under international investigation.
CRED warned that relying on such materials creates a dangerous imbalance between judicial cooperation and the uncritical reception of military intelligence.
Moreover, CRED said, the classification of humanitarian assistance activities as “terrorism financing,” based on the inclusion of beneficiary organizations on lists prepared by a foreign government, is of deep concern.
“Judicial testimony is thus replaced by political labeling,” the statement said, noting that if the Israeli occupation designates someone as “from a terrorist family,” that description is treated as a crime by an Italian judge without any independent verification.
The center further noted that the criminal case appears to retroactively reinterpret more than twenty years of activity under a single narrative, attempting to criminalize actions that were previously closed or archived.
It argued that reliance on so-called “new elements” provided by the Israeli occupation forces after October 7, 2023 has created an “emergency interpretive climate” that overturns principles of legality and legal certainty, retroactively casting lawful acts of solidarity as criminal conduct.
CRED described the situation as a clear example of “lawfare”, the use of criminal law as an extension of an external political and military strategy, warning that this allows intelligence assessments from a state accused of genocide to influence judicial decisions within the Italian Republic.
It is called an “institutional short-circuit” that undermines judicial sovereignty.
In addition, the center urged the Italian judiciary to adhere strictly to principles of independence and neutrality, stressing that criminal convictions must not be based on evidence produced by a military force engaged in war or on political characterizations.
“What is at stake is not only the fate of the defendants, but the integrity of the rule of law itself and the increasingly eroded boundary between justice and lawfare.” CRED concluded
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