Israel Deports 1,000 to Sudan Via Third Country
Image by getty images
Israel secretly repatriated at least 1,000 Sudanese citizens via a third country, an Israeli newspaper reported.
The repatriation was done without the knowledge of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Haaretz reported Tuesday.
Sudan is an enemy country which has vowed to punish any of its citizens for entering Israel.
The U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees prohibits Israel from returning asylum seekers to Sudan since by entering an enemy country they are at risk of death if they are returned.
Asylum seekers can be jailed in Israel for years without trial.
The Population, Immigration and Border Authority, a department of the Interior Ministry, told Haaretz that “the government’s policy of not deporting north Sudanese has not changed.”
Israel claims the repatriation was voluntary, according to Haaretz. Israel paid for the plane tickets, according to the newspaper.
Haaretz reported that it knows the name of the third country but is not releasing it in order to protect those repatriated.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
