Popular outcry at Egyptian arrest of Palestinian students

[ 09/02/2010 - 04:24 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The solidarity committee with, Palestinian captive in an Egyptian jail, Ayman Nofal has strongly condemned Tuesday the arrest of more than 150 Palestinian students at the hands of the Egyptian authorities, describing the campaign as "frenzied". Among the arrestees, according to the committee, was Palestinian police major Jaser Al-Shoyokhy, 37, who is pursuing his master degree. It added that he was kidnapped from his flat in Cairo. The committee warned that such an Egyptian policy against the Gazan students comes while 25 Palestinian citizens from Gaza Strip, including Nofal, had been detained in the Egyptian jails for nearly three years without charges or legal basis. It added that the Egyptian policy goes in harmony with the unjust siege imposed on the inhabitants of the Strip, which was recently completed with the Egyptian steel wall along the Gaza borders. The committee called on Egypt to live up to its obligations in this regard, and to take a role that is compatible with the country and its position in the Arab and Muslim world. "The Palestinian people are waiting from Egypt to help them free their 11,000 captives in Israeli jails not to add to their numbers", the committee pointed out. Meanwhile, the bureau of borders and crossing points in Gaza called on the Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing before emergency and humanitarian cases, including sick people and Palestinian students pursuing their studies abroad among other cases. In Gaza city, the ministry of prisoners and ex-prisoners' affairs held a workshop and recommended the formation of a supreme national committee that would support the Palestinian captives in Israeli jails. The participants agreed that the issue of the captives was one of the crucial issues for the Palestinian people with nearly 11,000 Palestinian captives languishing in Israeli jails, many of them for more than two decades. PA officials in Gaza Strip, including minister Mohammed Faraj Al-Ghoul and MP Mohammed Shehab, who is in charge of the prisoners' file in the PLC, stressed that the primary and the secondary objectives of the committee should be carefully specified.