Jail time means you're a criminal?

I think most of us would say yes to the title of this post with the caveat that some innocent people are or have been incarcerated. But, we're looking at the question from the perspective of an American who lives in a land where the justice system is usually reasonable. Would we say that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a criminal because he was in a Nazi jail? What about Pussy Riot in Moscow? Or, the three Americans in North Korea? Clearly, the answer to the last thee questions is "no".

I think the answer would be 'no' also in the case of some Palestinians imprisoned by the Israelis. In 1969 Rasmea Odeh was arrested along with 500 other Palestinians as part of security sweep after the 1967 war. As with the other 500, Odeh was tortured. She was beaten regularly with metal rods, kicked, threatened, humiliated, denied medical care and access to a bathroom, received electrical shocks, raped with batons. and denied access to legal resources. Her father was tortured in front of her. IDF personnel even attempted to make her father rape her. 

Eventually, she gave in and signed a confession to bombing a supermarket. However, we should bear in mind that some Palestinians who were detained by the IDF were later charged with crimes they did not commit in order to justify their detention. Whether Odeh did bomb the supermarket is up in the air as far as I can see.

After serving ten years she was released and, in 1994 came to the U.S. as her father was a U.S. citizen. She became a citizen in 2004 and was very active in the Arab-American community in Chicago. In 2013 she was indicted for immigration fraud based on her time in prison. One of the questions she was asked was whether she had ever been arrested, convicted or imprisoned. She said no.

Her defenders say she thought the question was limited to her time in the States. Her lawyer thinks it was PTSD, "We believe her PTSD affected her state of mind when she answered those questions. "Like someone who is a battered woman saying she was never married because she suppresses that information so as not to think about it." A second and I think stronger argument the lawyer raises, "These military courts the Israelis set up are illegal under international law, hence, no evidence from them should be used in this case."