Ministry of prisoners asks Carter to pressure IOA into accepting swap deal

[ 18/06/2009 - 06:29 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The ministry of prisoners and ex-prisoners in the Gaza Strip has asked former US president Jimmy Carter to pressure the Israeli occupation authority into concluding the prisoners' exchange deal. The ministry in a press release on Wednesday said that Carter was very much keen on handing a message from the "concerned" family of captured soldier Gilad Shalit to their son but he forgot about the suffering of the families of 11,000 Palestinian prisoners languishing in IOA jails. Carter should have pressured the IOA to release the prisoners in the list tabled by factions holding Shalit in return for his release, noting that some of those prisoners had spent more than 30 years in captivity, the ministry added. It noted that Carter's visit to the Gaza Strip coincided with the second year of banning families of 950 Gaza prisoners from visiting them without the intervention of any human rights group to protest the "criminal policy". The ministry said that a delegation of the families of those prisoners delivered a message written in English language to Carter explaining the suffering of those prisoners. It finally called on the world community not to equate the victim with the culprit, to mull the harsh incarceration conditions of the Palestinian prisoners and to demand respecting international conventions in this regard including extending badly needed medical treatment to the sick among them or else the world would be an accomplice to the IOA crimes against the Palestinian people.