Comrade Leader Ahmad Sa'adat on hunger strike

From the PFLP website

Comrade Leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has entered the second week of hunger strike in protest of the Zionist prison administration's policy of abuse and isolation of Palestinian prisoners on June 11, 2009.

The Zionist prison regime has stepped up its campaign of abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners immediately following its criminal attack of terror on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 and has placed the prisoners under siege alongside Gaza. The isolation of Comrade Sa'adat, who is already suffering from difficult health conditions, and who has been in isolation since March, was recently extended. Comrade Sa'adat has taken this action to put pressure on the prison administration to revoke this decision and to protest the policy of isolation and abuse aimed at all Palestinian prisoners.

The attacks on tbe rights of Palestinian prisoners, won through years of valiant and heroic struggle on the front lines against the occupier, have included the imposition of fines, prevention of rest periods, denial of family visits, confiscation of prisoners' belongings, denial of household items, and the regular use of solitary confinement and isolation cells, particularly against leaders of the prisoners, in an attempt to break the prisoners' strength as a backbone of the Palestinian national movement.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stated that the Zionist occupation authorities have full responsibility for the life and health of Comrade Sa'adat and called for immediate action by human rights groups and international institutions to protect the life of Comrade Sa'adat and defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat issued a statement in solidarity with Comrade Sa'adat, calling for justice and liberation for Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners and demanding urgent action. Issa Qaraqa and Tayseer Khaled issued statements, as did the European Palestinian community, calling for solidarity in defense of Sa'adat and all 11,000 prisoners standing on the front lines against the criminal occupier.

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PLO official calls for solidarity with imprisoned PFLP leader

Date: 12 / 06 / 2009 Time: 14:26

[Ma'anImages] Nablus – Ma’an – A senior Palestine Liberation Organization official on Friday called for Palestinians and Arabs to show their solidarity for the imprisoned secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Sa'adat. The official, PLO Director of Expatriate Affairs, Tayseer Khaled, said that Arabs should support the imprisoned PFLP leader, who two weeks ago began a hunger strike over prison conditions at an Israeli jail in Beersheva. “The defense of the national prisoner movement at the Israeli collective arresting camps (especially the comrades; speaker of the Legislative Council, Aziz Dwek and Ahmad Sa’adat, Marwan Al-Barghouthy, the comrade, Ibrahim Abo-Hagla, and many others) is a priority on the list of tasks our communities decided to work on, as well as our refugees’ right to return,” Khaled said. Ahmad Sa’adat’s announcement of his open-ended hunger strike is the latest in a wider campaign of solidarity with the national prisoner movement by demonstrations, protests, sit-ins, writing to the media, talking to visual and audible media, and sending notes of denunciation and condemnations of the Israeli policy and its inhumane practices, the PLO official added. He also said that human rights organizations and others should intervene and pressure Israel to stop its policy of collective arrest campaigns against the Palestinians, and to release "our brace prisoners." Khaled noted that their imprisonment is a violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits an occupying power from seizing residents and extraditing them to foreign territory. Khaled concluded by calling on Palestinian communities in the Diaspora to work toward freeing the more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.