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Last update - 05:16 05/06/2008 Thai worker awarded thousands for unlawful arrest By Ruth Sinai Tags: thailand, israel  The immigration police will compensate a Thai worker who was unlawfully arrested, held for nine days and almost deported, despite having a legal permit to work in Israel, with an unprecedented sum of NIS 36,000. The Thai woman was arrested by immigration police in February 2007 with 11 Thai men when police officers closed the farm where they were working, due to the appalling sanitary conditions they were kept in by their employer. Immigration authorities then incarcerated the group of Thai workers at a Ben-Gurion International Airport cell designed to hold foreigners denied entry to Israel, without telling them why they were being kept in custody or bringing them before a judge to authorize their detention. Meanwhile, the Thai men were released and given new employers, while the woman was issued an expulsion order, despite the fact that she held permits allowing her to stay in Israel and had been the victim of her previous employer's neglect. Advertisement The authorities apparently asked for the expulsion order solely because they could not find her a new employer, said Yuval Livnat, a lawyer with the Kav Laoved workers hotline. Upon hearing the woman's case, Livnat sought an emergency court injunction and managed to revoke the expulsion order only hours before she was scheduled to board a Bangkok-bound plane. After her release, the woman filed a lawsuit through Attorney Hisham Shabaita, a social activist employed at the Law Clinic of Tel Aviv University. During the hearing at the Tel Aviv's Magistrate Court, Judge Michal Sharir suggested the state compensate the Thai national with NIS 36,000. State Prosecution attorney Tamar Shahaf claimed the sum was too high. Instead, she suggested NIS 1,000 in compensation for every day of incarceration. "It's a reasonable sum considering the average monthly salary for a foreign laborer working in agriculture is NIS 4,000 a month," Shahaf said, according to the protocol. The Thai woman had paid an agent $7,700 to receive a work permit in Israel before she arrived in the country. Shahaf also argued that Thai nationals held by the immigration police were not incarcerated, but rather were being kept in temporary lodgings. "They were given accommodation. It was not a jail because they were not placed behind a shut door - there was no other solution," Shahaf said. Livnat said the incident was particularly outrageous, as six months ago, the state decided to rent three apartments to house victims of human trafficking. According to Livnat, the group of Thai workers, who were kept in terrible sanitary conditions, fell under the category of human trafficking victims, and yet they were not placed in apartments because the state has not rented any. Yesterday, a U.S. State Department report said Israel was not doing enough to fight human trafficking. One section in the report censured Israel for not providing human trafficking victims with adequate shelters. Related articles: Thailand: We don't object to int'l control on labor migration to Israel New bill would sentence migrants and refugees to five years in jail Israel's Nepalese workers declare independence Bookmark to del.icio.us   Terrorist donuts U.S. Arabs irate over criticism of celebrity cook's kaffiyeh. All the way to hell Rosner's blog: It's Obama's good intentions that pro-Israel activists fear.   1.   victims of human traficking - slaves 08:40  |  paulo 2005 05/06/08   2.   Positive development 10:39  |  Dror 05/06/08

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