Exonerated Muslim Officer Sues Israel
A Muslim army officer who served more than seven years in prison after being coerced into a false confession of treason and espionage sued the government for damages Sunday.
Lt. Izat Nafsu of the Circassian ethnic minority, who was freed by the Supreme Court in May after serving 7 1/2 years of an 18-year term, presented his suit for $820,000 to Atty. Gen. Yosef Harish.
“It is a suit for legal expenses, lost income, delay of economic and social promotion, loss of liberty, physical and emotional suffering . . . ruin of marriage and family life,” Nafsu said.
The Supreme Court, in an unprecedented ruling, severely criticized the methods of mental and physical pressure used by Israel’s Shin Bet security service to extort a confession from Nafsu.
It said that Nafsu had been illegally interrogated and that Shin Bet personnel had committed perjury at his 1980 trial.
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