Palestine woman barred from visiting son in Israeli jail

[ 06/09/2010 - 11:31 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- A human rights activist says Israeli authorities continue to prohibit 70-year-old Hajja Um Ibrahim from visiting her son for 14 years under claims that such a visit poses a threat to Israeli security. The elderly lady has been searching for a Palestinian family outside her area to adopt her son and visit him on her behalf, as she used to do years back with Arab prisoners. Prisoners' affairs researcher Abdel Nasser Farwana says Hajja Um Ibrahim Baroud, who is from a northern Gaza Strip refugee camp, is one of thousands of Palestinians who  have been barred them from visiting their children languishing in Israeli jails for alleged “security reasons”. Farwana stresses that security measures are no longer an exception, but have become a worrying phenomenon and established policy after the Aqsa Intifada (uprising) broke out in September 2000. A third of Palestinian prisoners have been denied family visits under different pretexts as a result of the so-called “security measures”. The unjust policy has nothing to do with security, Farwana noted, but is only a policy that reflects revenge from Israeli authorities on prisoners and their families and is designed to come between the families and step up punishment on prisoners. Farwana says Hajja’s eldest son Ibrahim Baroud, 48, was arrested April 9, 1986 and sentenced to 27 years behind bars. He is now in the Ashkelon prison after being transferred throughout his term to several prisons.