Bethlehem / PNN - Minister of Detainees and Ex Detainees Affairs, Issa Qaraqe’, said today that 96 people were killed in Israeli prisons since 1967.
The last was Mousa Juma of Jerusalem who died due to medical negligence.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the former director of Bethlehem’s Palestinian Prisoner Society, Qaraqe’ said that the highest number of those killed fell during the past 10 years.
Regarding other deaths, Qaraqe’ noted that the official number of bodies that the Israelis are holding on to post-mortem is 300, while there are hundreds more Palestinians missing from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
For its part, the Israeli government refuses to hand over the remains to bereaved families for burial and closure.
Qaraqe’ made his statements during his visit to the family home of Shadi Al Darwish on the twentieth anniversary of his death.
“Shadi was one of the heroes of the movement and its captive leaders. On the twenty-seventh of July, 1989 he was able to escape from a prison in Hebron. He lived in the Hebron area, haunted and hunted. He was killed in a clash with Israeli special units on the sixteenth of August.”
The Israeli government kept his body for five years, until giving it back to the family on 31 August, 1994 after human rights institutions intervened. Shadi Darwish was arrested by the occupation authorities on 28 June, 1988 on charges of participating in the activities of the first Intifada.
Qaraqe’ revealed that 47 percent of the Palestinians killed within the Israeli prisons die from the torture they undergo during investigation, while the others died due to medical negligence and murder in the prisons and detention camps.
He pointed out that more than 200 executions were carried out in the field by the Israeli army and special units after they had been arrested. The injured are not given medical treatment and often die from blood loss before seeing a prison.
Qaraqe’ said that many of those who were executed outside the scope of the judiciary could have been arrested instead of killed, and a number of the martyrs were executed after they were handcuffed shackled.
The prisoners’ minister also noted that by keeping the bodies of the killed, the Israelis increase the suffering of Palestinian families and show that “Israeli figures are a blot on the conscience of humanity and the principles of human rights. These are war crimes.”
He said, “The government of Israel is still holding hundreds of bodies of the martyrs, as they have been for many years, with a notable surge during the last Intifada where the bodies of the dead and abducted are put in the tombs that lack of minimum humanitarian norms of religious cemeteries. These are closed military zones to prevent the citizens and journalists from gaining access.”
The tombs of which Qaraqe’ speaks are not named, instead they are numbers, and what is marked is eroding, according to sources.
Of his homes town, Qaraqe’ said, “Israel has been holding 18 people from the province of Bethlehem for seven years.”
The twenty-seventh of August is the annual day, says Qaraqe’, to push for the release of the bodies of the martyrs, whether they died in the field or the prison.
