Last update - 00:00 17/10/2006
Human traffickers to be sentenced to 16-20 years in prison
By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent
Human traffickers can be sentenced to 16-20 years in prison, according to a new law which passed its second and third hearings in the Knesset on Tuesday. The bill was approved with a majority of 30 MKs and no opposition.
Israel is a major hub for human traffickers who sell people for the purpose of forced labor, slavery, sexual exploitation and black-market organ sales.
The bill, initiated by Meretz MK Zehava Gal'on and cabinet ministers, stipulates several trafficking offenses for the following purposes: Stealing organs, kidnapping newborn children, slavery, forced labor, prostitution, pornography and sexual abuse.
This is the first time the Israeli legal system has defined an offense as "slavery." The term is defined in the new law as "a situation in which authority normally exercised over property is imposed on a person."
The law stipulates that the maximum punishment for human trafficking is 20 years in prison and the maximum punishment for smuggling a person out of the country to perform such an act is 10 years in jail.
The new bill also ups the number of years in prison for offenders who take away their victim's passports from one year in jail to three. In addition, should the offender's actions by taking away the passport subject the victim to human trafficking as stipulated in the new law, the offender could be incarcerated for up to five years.
The law also obligates the courts to award human trafficking victims compensation, which will be paid by the offender or by confiscating the offender's property.
According to the new law, judges can issue a gag order in human trafficking cases, to avoid identifying the victims of such crimes.
Gal'on says this legislation is the crowning glory of her work in the Knesset so far. She says this is a very important bill, "which is aimed at protecting human trafficking victims and migrant workers who work under appalling conditions in the country's backyard."
The MK said the Knesset is sending out a message, saying it "sees the struggle against human trafficking as a serious issue and is stating that you can't trade in human beings and get off scott-free."
Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Menachem Ben-Sasson, who brought the bill up for a vote in the plenum, said "this law places Israel in line with the world's most enlightened nations. It deals with one of the worst problems in crime and corruption worldwide."