Comrades Ahed and Linan Abu Ghoulmeh face isolation and repression in the occupation jails

 PFLP website

Comrade Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, imprisoned and in isolation, was transferred on October 29, 2010 to the isolation sector of the Ramle prison by the occupation authorities, while his sister, Comrade Linan Abu Ghoulmeh, entered the sixth day of her own hunger strike against the occupation prison authorities.

Abu Ghoulmeh, who was accused by the occupation of being the leader of the Abu Ali Mustafa, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in the West Bank, was abducted along with Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the PFLP, from the Palestinian Authority's Jericho prison on March 14, 2006, where they had been held under US and British guard. He has been in isolation since January 14, 2010 and prohibited from family visits, including visits with his parents.

He is now being held in isolation with Sheikh Jamal Abu Al-Hija, to whose family Comrade Wafa Abu Ghoulmeh, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh's wife, paid a solidarity visit during the week of action for Ahmad Sa'adat in mid-October. Wafa Abu Ghoulmeh said that "the occupation practices repression and racism against detainees, which is aimed to break their will and prevent them from exercising their human and national rights." She commented that these efforts inevitably fail in the face of the prisoners' steadfastness and defiance of Zionism and racism.

She called for intensified efforts to expose abuses of Palestinian prisoners, particularly those in isolation, praising the efforts of the campaign in solidarity with Comrade Sa'adat that organized numerous events and activities throughout Palestine and around the world, and saying that solidarity with a leader like Ahmad Sa'adat, of a national caliber, is solidarity with all prisoners, including her husband.

Comrade Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh's sisters, Comrades Linan and Taghreed Abu Ghoulmeh, are also imprisoned in occupation jails. Comrade Linan is currently on hunger strike protesting her separation from her sister. She has been on hunger strike for six days in Hasharon prison in protest of the administration's refusal to respond to her demands to be held in the same prison as Taghreed. Another prisoner, Nada Tawir, joined in the hunger strike with Linan, demanding the release of the Abu Ghoulmeh sisters.

The Union of Palestinian Women's Committees issued a statement condemning the crimes of Zionism against Palestinian prisoners, particularly Palestinian women prisoners. They declared that the occupation is responsible for the life of Linan Abu Ghoulmeh and denounced the targeting of her family. In addition to her brother and sister's imprisonment, she is the widow of Comrade martyr Amjad Mleitat, who was assassinated by the occupation authorities in Nablus.

She had previously been held for six years in the occupation prisons and was abducted and placed under administrative detention less than five months after her release. The UPWC called upon the international women's movement, feminist and human rights organizations, to pay attention to the struggle of Palestinian prisoners, particularly women prisoners, and defend their rights.