Ouda Tarabin

Who is Ouda Tarabin?

Ouda Tarabin is an Israeli Bedouin imprisoned in Egypt since 2000 on suspicion of spying for Israel after illegally crossing the Israeli-Egyptian border.

Tarabin, then aged 19, was arrested in 2000 after he illegally crossed the border from Israel. Illegal border crossings by the Bedouin residents of Israel and Egypt are not a rarity; Israel also occasionally arrests Egyptian crossers, who are returned over the border after a short interrogation. Ouda, however, was tried in absentia on charges of spying for Israel, by an Egyptian military court though never indicted; when he was arrested the court informed him that he had been sentenced to 15 years before he had entered Egypt and that his father had been similarly sentenced in absentia to 25 years for espionage.

Ouda, therefore, had no chance of defending himself in person, and was convicted under Egypt's emergency law, in effect since 1981, granting police sweeping powers of arrest. The stated basis of the prosecution was testimony given by Ouda's Egyptian cousin, Eid Suleiman, who was arrested for similar charges in 1999 and is also currently imprisoned. According to his family, Ouda he has done nothing wrong other than cross into Egypt without the proper documentation.