Long shot: U.S. action against freed Palestinians?

On Monday, Israel named the first 26 of the 104 Palestinian terrorist prisoners that it agreed to release as a goodwill gesture for the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations. But while the Palestinian terrorists will initially earn their freedom in this deal, efforts are underway in the U.S. to bring about the further prosecution of those terrorists whose attacks harmed American citizens in Israel.

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) is urging the Department of Justice to work closely with the Israeli government to ensure that no terrorists who have killed or harmed Americans be included in the prisoner release deal.

Should Israel release such terrorists, Salmon urges the DOJ to prosecute them under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1990 — which stipulates that whenever an American is killed anywhere around the world, the U.S. has a right to bring the terrorist to the U.S. to stand justice.

He notes that in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal in 2011, which released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit’s freedom after more than five years in Hamas captivity, “approximately 20 of those released had been involved in terrorist acts where an American citizen was killed.”

At the time of the Shalit prisoner swap, a number of American legislators — including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), former Reps. Joe Walsh (R-IL) and Howard Berman (D-CA), and 52 other members of Congress — wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on the matter, urging him to prosecute the released Palestinian terrorists.

In a reply letter sent to Sen. Inhofe dated April 5, 2012, which JNS.org obtained from the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a pro-Israel think tank and policy center in Washington that is supporting Salmon’s push, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich described “significant impediments” for prosecuting terrorist attacks that occur overseas. In particular, Weich noted that terrorist attacks in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza “present particular challenges.” According to Weich, these challenges are related to Israel’s crime scene evidence collection.

“For Israeli officials, the focus following an attack is often, understandably, on clearing the crime scene to minimize disruption, taking steps to prevent a further attack, and neutralizing operatives responsible, rather than on collecting evidence consistent with standards required for prosecution in the United States,” Weich wrote in the letter to Inhofe.

Complicating matters further is the U.S. involvement in the effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations, led by Secretary of State John Kerry.

But Sarah Stern, founder and president of EMET, told JNS.org that she believes “if there is a will, there is a way” when it comes to U.S. prosecution of released Palestinian terrorists. Stern added, however, that she does not believe the DOJ has the will to prosecute these cases and is instead pointing to legal and bureaucratic obstacles that can easily be overcome.

“I know there are serious obstacles, but if we really wanted to get these terrorists, we could,” Stern said.

Stern pointed to the case of Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist who was sentenced to multiple life sentences for her participation in the 2001 Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 15 civilians, including two Americans. She was later set free as a result of the Shalit deal. Tamimi now lives in Jordan and has become something of a celebrity. She hosts a television show on a Hamas-run satellite TV station about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“We have an extradition treaty with Jordan. We could bring her to justice,” Stern told JNS.org.

This sentiment has been echoed by Sherri Mandell, mother of terror victim Koby Mandell, 13, who was brutally stoned to death along with his friend Yosef Ishran, 14, while on a hike outside of their home in Tekoa in the Gush Etzion area of Judea and Samaria in 2001, at the beginning of the Second Intifada. Koby was an Israeli-American and his murder inspired the creation of the DOJ’s Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OJVOT).

The Koby Mandell Act became law after it was incorporated into a larger spending bill in 2005. It required the U.S. Attorney General to establish the OJVOT to monitor acts of terrorism against Americans outside the U.S., and to attempt to bring to justice those terrorists who have harmed Americans.

Stern said that she believes the OJVOT is not living up to its mission.

“They could be a real advocate for the victims of terrorist attacks,” Stern said.

Since 2005, the OJVOT has only prosecuted one terrorist who murdered an American citizen— the killer of a Christian missionary in Indonesia—according to EMET.

Again referring to the Tamimi case, Stern believes that it presents an opportunity for the U.S. to do more for the victims of terrorism as well as to deter future violence against Americans.

“That case could set an excellent example to the world and show terrorists that they will be held accountable for killing American citizens,” Stern concluded.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was killed in the attack orchestrated by Tamimi, has been highly critical of both the Shalit deal through which Tamimi was freed and the latest deal to free 104 Palestinian terrorists for renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations.

“From the standpoint of simple negotiating theory, what Israel has done, even if Israel never actually delivers, is a losing move,” Roth told JNS.org in July. “Even if there were a case for saying Israel ought to concede to a list of pre-negotiating demands from the other side, freeing terrorists ought never to have been one of them.”

“I am emphatically not political, and it does not come naturally to me to be speaking against something the government in its wisdom decided to do,” Roth added. “But the idea to hand over murderers in order to prime some sort of negotiating pump simply enrages me.”

Among the 26 terrorists in the first phase of the prisoner release for Israeli-Palestinian conflict talks, 17 were convicted of murder, and the remaining prisoners were jailed on charges of manslaughter, attempted murder, kidnapping and conspiring to commit murder.