Ghoul: Isolating prisoners a war crime

[ 11/10/2010 - 06:55 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Minister of prisoners in Gaza Dr. Mohammed Al-Ghoul has described the Israeli occupation authority's (IOA) policy of isolating Palestinian prisoners as a war crime. He said in a press release on Monday that the isolation of MP Ahmed Saadat, the secretary general of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine, and many others is an attempt to break their determination and subject them to the Israeli prisons authority's (IPA) dictates. The minister charged that the policy is in violation of the international doctrines and agreements that incriminate humiliating and torturing humans and isolating them. The IOA is trying to turn the isolated prisoner into a mentally and physically disturbed person, adding that the IPA isolates 16 Palestinian prisoners in the "slow death isolation graves". He pointed out that some of them had spent 18 years such as Uwaida Kallab who lost his mind as a result of the cruel isolation conditions. Ghoul castigated the Arab and international parliaments for remaining silent toward such a policy against MP Saadat and others. The IOA does not put a time limit for the isolation of prisoners in a bid to increase the psychological pressures on them and renews their isolation in summary trials in which the prisoners are not informed of reasons for their solitary confinement. The minister asked the international organizations to intervene and put an end to the "policy of death" against prisoners in isolation. Saadat has been held in solitary confinement for one and a half years. The Wa'ed society for prisoners warned of the continued isolation of Saadat in a statement on Monday on the 500th day of his isolation. It said that the IOA was planning to harm those in isolation, calling on human rights groups to step in and demand a halt to such a crime against humanity.