7-Dec-09: From the International Alliance Against Terrorism

Media release | December 6th 2009

International Alliance Against Terrorism calls for greater support of terror’s victims: Impunity for terrorists must not be the rule of our world!

The International Alliance Against Terrorism supports all terror victims, all hostages and their families and aims at raising awareness to terrorism as a major violation of human rights.

The international community should have two guidelines to deal with terrorism:

• All hostages must be freed, in the name of universal human rights, because all hostages are innocent.
• All terrorists judged and condemned should remain in prison, in the name of international justice, whatever their identity and the cause they claim to serve, provided  they have been given fair trials and humane detention conditions.
  

Informed by Arnold Roth, President of Keren Malki, the Israeli partner of our International Alliance, of the possible liberation of Ahlam Tamimi, among many other Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for the liberation of Guilad Shalit, Franco-Israeli hostage, kept incommunicado by the Hamas, we wish to express to the Roth family and all terror victims affected by the case, our full solidarity with their fight for justice and truth.

Ahlam Tamimi was the organizer and active accomplice of the mass murder committed on 9 August 2001 at the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, a terror attack in which Mr and Mrs Roth’s daughter, Malki, was one of 15 victims, among 8 children and infants.

Judged and condemned to life imprisonment, Ms Tamimi has purged only 5 years of her sentence.
Interviewed and filmed in her Israeli prison, she stated she felt no regret.

To the journalist, Barbara Victor, she declared: “I did not regret the death of all those children. They should have returned to Poland, Russia or the United States, from which countries their parents came.”

Our Alliance does not judge the negotiations entered into by governments attempting to free their kidnapped citizens.

We have no mandate and no wish  to take part in the various conflicts that beset our planet.

We are appalled, not on account of the possible liberation of murderers to save the life of a hostage but because of the world silence: the unfairness, the moral iniquity of such an “exchange” is not only tolerated but denied.

We are appalled to see the line between innocence and guilt blurred.

We warn against the deadly danger of perverted values, of a world in which moral condemnation fails to focus on individual responsibility and moral support fails to be bestowed on civilian victims targeted by terrorist actions.

We warn against the incentive effect of triumphant impunity granted to those who perpetrated terror attacks and kidnapping may have in our global world to spread the terrorist scourge.

We call on our fellow citizens in our different countries, on civil society, on all terror victims organizations and all NGOs, on national and international authorities to voice their indignation and defend the human rights of terror victims and their families.

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The organizations and network members of the International Alliance Against Terrorism are: Mouvement Pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme (France); Omagh Support and Self Help Group (Northern Ireland); AIVITER Associazione Italiana Vittime del Terrorismo (Italy); Djazairouna (Algeria); AVT Asociacion Victimas del Terrorismo (Spain); Malki Foundation (Israel); Philip Spencer, Représentative of Euston Manifesto (Great-Britain) Centro des estudes legales sobre el terrorismo y sus victimas (Argentine)

Representatives of IAAT are available for media comments and interviews. Contact: Huguette Chomski Magnis +33-6-6626-4223. Or by email at alliance.against.terrorism@googlemail.com