An Israeli military court on Wednesday sentenced Spanish aid worker Juana Rishmawi to 13 months in prison for illegally funding a Palestinian militant group.
According to the AFP news agency, a spokeswoman for the military court said that 63-year-old Ivana Rushmawi had confessed to playing a role as a fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Rashmawi has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating "Similar, baseless allegations concerning Palestinian territory have been made more than once.The court upheld the sentence in a petition filed by the prosecution last week in which it agreed to pay a ڈالر 16,000 fine to Spanish aid worker Rashmawi.
Rashmavi's lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, told AFP that his client could be released in a matter of days, depending on the time.
Feldman's lawyer says Juana Rushmawi has been in custody since April and could be released within two weeks if the parole committee reduces her sentence by a third.
A Palestinian group was working for the Union of Health Work Committees after marrying a Palestinian aid worker born in Madrid, Spain.Israel says the group has sent donations to the PFLP, but last year Israel banned the group in the occupied West Bank.
Feldman told reporters outside a military court that Rishmawi, a Spanish aid worker, was unaware that the money was being raised for the Palestinian organization.
"We decided to file a petition stating that we did not know about the transfer of funds to the Palestinian organization, but we did suspect that the health group's PF was involved," she told AFP. Has anything to do with LP.
