'We got the impression that the committee understood our pain and grief,' says father of captive soldier, who testified in Geneva earlier today before Goldstone's committee
Noam Shalit, father of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, testified before a UN committee in Geneva Monday. He told Ynet he thought the message he had been trying to get across to the committee had been absorbed by its members.
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"We wanted to stress that for three years our son's basic and international rights have been trampled by Hamas in Gaza. We received the impression that the committee members understood our pain and grief," he said.
Shalit said Richard Goldstone, who heads the committee, asked him about reports in the Arab media saying a prisoner swap deal was imminent. "I told him we have been hearing these rumors for three years," he said.
Hina Jilani, the UN's special representative on human rights defenders, said she identified with the Shalits and that anyone who uses human suffering to promote a political agenda was wrong.
Israel has boycotted the committee's hearings on the IDF operation in Gaza, claiming it was biased. On this subject Shalit said he would continue "to appear before any relevant international agent".
Later Shalit met the Red Cross's Middle East representative, Beatrice Megevand Roggo, but she had no news for him on efforts to examine his son.
"Hamas is still refusing to allow Red Cross representatives to see Gilad," he said. "I repeated our demand to receive a sign of life on some level, from a letter or a note to a family meeting with Gilad, as is done in Israel when Palestinian families come in from the West Bank to visit their relatives who are incarcerated here."
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