Palestinian children tortured in Israeli occupation jails

[ 21/05/2010 - 11:47 AM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Hiba Masalha, a Palestinian lawyer who visited child-prisoners at the Majedo and Rimonim prisons said that a number of them were subjected to barbaric torture before being questioned or charged. Masalha said on Thursday that she met with 17-year-old Ahmad Farouq Jaara from Nablus who was arrested on 14 January 2010 at the Za'tara roadblock. He told her that he was subjected to a harsh interrogation at Betah Tekva detention centre where he was tied to a stool with both hands and feet tied. He was interrogated and tortured for 21 days causing his health to deteriorate. She also met with 16-year-old Salama Abdel-Jawad from the Askar refugee camp who was arrested at the Hamra roadblock on 14 February 2010. He told her that on his arrest the soldiers kicked and beat him mercilessly using rifle butts bruising him all over and causing him to bleed from the face and legs. She also said that Mahmoud Yaziji, 16 years, from Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, told her that he was arrested at the  Erez crossing by special forces who beat him severely, causing bruises all over his body. He was detained for one whole night at the crossing before he was taken to Askalan prison. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Atef Jaradat, from Sair, in al-Khalil told the lawyer that IOF troops arrested him on 2 February 2010  him to the Keryat Arba settlement where he spent one night. He was then taken to Atsion detention centre where he was interrogated while tied to a stool in the cold and under the rain, during the interrogation an interrogator going by the name of Imran, beat him on his face, his arms and legs, then gave him electric shock making him fall each time he was subjected to the electric shock. He is also being denied family visits since his arrest. Masalha also met with Muhammad Rashid Abu Shahin (16 years), from the Balata refugee camp, who told her that he was arrested on 3 January 2010 on the Hamra roadblock where he was manhandled and beaten by the occupation soldiers using rifle butts. He was then taken to the Hawwara detention centre where the interrogater used a plastic pipe to beat him with so that he confesses. The child is suffering chronic back pain as a result of being hit on the spine. He has not been provided with any medical attention apart from being given pain killers. Zakerya Waddah Awada, 16 years, from Nablus told her that he was arrested on 2 March 2010 and that IOF troops beat him up inside the military jeep. At the Hawwara detention centre soldiers took him out of his cell during the night to the yard where he was forced to strip naked and stand in the cold for the rest of the night. He was denied visits since his arrest.

Farwana: 13 Palestinian lawmakers remain in Israeli jails

[ 20/05/2010 - 10:01 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Abdul Naser Farwana, a Palestinian researcher in prisoners' affairs, said on Friday that there are 13 Palestinian lawmakers still incarcerated in Israeli jails without any justified legal reason. Farwana's remarks came after the Israeli occupation released MP Mohammed Abu Tair of Hamas Movement after 43 months in detention, adding that ten out of the thirteen are affiliated with Hamas, two with Fatah and one with the PFLP. He named the ten Hamas lawmakers as Abdul Jaber Foqaha, 43, Hassan Yousef, 56, Nezar Ramadan, 50, Mohammed Al-Natshe, 52, Nayef Al-Rejoub, 52, Basim Za'areer, 48, Azzam Salhab, 45, Ali Romanin, 50, Ayman Daraghma, 47, and Palestinian Jerusalemite lawmaker Mohammed Tutah, 42. The two Fatah MPs were Marwan Barghouthi, 51, and Jamal Tairawi, 44; while the PFLP lawmaker was its secretary-general Ahmad Sa'adat, Farwana said. He added that during the PA legislative elections in 2006 that Hamas had won, the issue of the prisoners was strongly present as 31 prisoners were nominated by their respective factions to contest the parliamentary elections, at least 15 of them won the elections indicating the high attention the Palestinian people pay to the prisoners' issue. In June 2007, the Israeli occupation authorities launched an unprecedented arrest campaign against Hamas's lawmakers and ministers after its soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian resistance fighters. Many of the arrested lawmakers were placed under administrative detention while others were sentenced to different jail terms, Farwana pointed out, stressing that the arrest and prosecution of the lawmakers as flagrant violation of international laws and politically motivated. In this concern, Farwana urged Arab and international parliaments to pressure the Israeli occupation to release all the 13 lawmakers that remain in its jails.

IOA decided to exile MP Abu Tair from Jerusalem

[ 21/05/2010 - 09:59 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation authority has decided Thursday  to exile Palestinian Jerusalemite lawmaker MP Mohammed Abu Tair from the occupied city forever,  just hours after they released him from jail where he was arbitrarily detained for 43 months. The decision of exiling Abu Tair was handed over to him after he was summoned by the IOA authorities in the occupied Palestinian city and gave him one month to back up his things and move out of the city where he was born. PIC correspondent in the city said that the IOA told Abu Tair that he should select either the West Bank or Gaza Strip to live, and decided to deny him all his legal rights alleging he possesses no residence permit in the city. Abu Tair, for his part, rejected the decision and described it as part of the Israeli policy of extortion and repressive measures against Palestinian Jerusalemites, underlining that his family's roots in the city stretched to more than 500 years, and that no law in this world could deny him or his family the right to dwell in the city. "You, specifically, has no place in Jerusalem, and we will kick you out of it", Abu Tair quoted the chief of the Israeli occupation police in the city as saying to him after he handed him the order. Relatives of Abu Tair said he survived an attack by Jewish settlers while on his way to the police station that summoned him. Earlier, the IOA rendered similar decision against former Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs Khalid Abu Arafa who was also jailed with Abu Tair for nearly four years. However, lawmakers from the change and reform bloc in the Palestinian legislature described the decision as "arbitrary and void" that aims at emptying the occupied city from its real owners. The lawmakers underscored that the Israeli schemes would fail in the face of the exemplary steadfastness and resoluteness of the Palestinian people. They also deprecated the indifferent stand of the Ramallah-based PA regarding the Israeli decision, urging all concerned human rights and legal institutions to block the decision and to pressure the Israeli occupation into respecting Palestinian legitimate rights.

IOF troops arrest a whole family in southern Jenin

[ 21/05/2010 - 01:32 PM ]

JENIN, (PIC)-- More than 10 military vehicles raided, at dawn Friday, the village of Kafr Rai to the south of the northern West Bank city of Jenin and arrested a whole family after ransacking their home. Eyewitnesses said that the IOF troops commandeered homes overlooking the house of Majed Saleh Dallah (55 years) and took positions on the rooftops of those houses then they surrounded and raided his house. The occupation troops ransacked Dallah's house and used police dogs during their search of the house. The occupation troops arrested Dallah and four of his children aged 17 to 35 and left summonses for the other three ordering them to surrender themselves to the occupation security services at Salem military post.

IOF Deports two Brothers from Beer Sheva in Israel to the Gaza Strip

21-5-2010

Al Mezan

On Friday morning 21 May 2010, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) deported Hamid and Emad Attallah Abu Dwaba (21 and 19 respectively) from Beer Sheva in Israel to the Gaza Strip. According to Al Mezan's field investigations, the two brothers live in the As-Sania Trabien area in Beer Sheva. The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) detained them on Friday 21 May 2010 and they were deported to the Gaza Strip at Erez crossing on the same day.  

Azzam in Cairo to discuss issue of Islamic Jihad prisoners in Egypt’s jails

[ 20/05/2010 - 11:05 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Senior Islamic Jihad leader Nafid Azzam traveled on Wednesday to Cairo to discuss the file of his Movement’s detainees in Egyptian jails, who were arrested upon their return to the Gaza Strip. Spokesman for the Movement Da’wood Shihab said that Azzam went to Egypt after he received an official invitation to visit Cairo to discuss the file of Islamic Jihad prisoners there, denying any kind of mediation in this regard between his Movement and Egypt. The spokesman noted that the number of Islamic Jihad prisoners in Egyptian jails is about 30 Palestinians, affirming that all of them used legal ways and official documents during their travel from and to Egypt. In a related context, an Egyptian state security officer reported, on condition of anonymity, that a Palestinian citizen from Gaza called Ayman Nofal, imprisoned for years, is living in harsh incarceration conditions and exposed to severe torture in Egyptian jails. The officer said he saw Nofal twice being taken to the interrogation room with his hands and feet shackled, adding that the Palestinian prisoner was locked up alone for more than one year and a half inside Abu Zaabal prison in Cairo in a two square meter solitary cell, having no source of ventilation or lighting, except a metal bucket used as a toilet. He revealed further that in the last six months, a prisoner affiliated with Hamas joined Nofal in his new two square meter cell inside Al-Marj prison in Cairo and both of them sleep alternately because of the narrow area of the cell. “When I saw him, once, he was being carried by soldiers in the corridor of the investigation section and unable to walk alone because of the severe torture he was subjected to during the interrogation. His body was frail, his hair and beard were unshaven for months and he was wearing an unbearably smelly clothes to the extent that the two soldiers carrying him could not put up with the smell,” the officer confirmed. The officer noted that the prison administrations in Egypt deny the presence of Palestinian detainees in their cells and transfer them to special places underground whenever human rights activists visit the jails. He also disclosed that the prison administrations of Al-Marj, Burj Al-Arab and Abu Zaabal as well as the state security in Cairo received top official orders to tighten punitive measures against Palestinian prisoners and do everything that could humiliate them, especially those affiliated with Hamas, to punish them for their Movement’s refusal to sign Egypt’s reconciliation paper.

IOA releases Abu Tir, IOF soldiers round up 7 citizens

[ 20/05/2010 - 09:25 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) released Jerusalemite MP Mohammed Abu Tir after 43 months of incarceration during which he was moved from one IOA jail to another. Abu Tir, 59, has spent almost 30 years in aggregate in IOA jails and was charged in his last imprisonment sentence of affiliation with the Hamas parliamentary bloc. Abu Tir was detained in a campaign that did not spare any of Hamas elected MPs in the West Bank on 29/6/2006. Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continued their daily arrest of Palestinian citizens in the West Bank and rounded up seven of them at dawn Thursday. The Israeli radio said that the IOF troops detained two in Bethlehem and five in Taku village, Bethlehem district, all of one family and all were 17 years old except one who was 20 years old.