Law allows Israel to arrest Gaza man minutes after his release

[ 19/01/2011 - 10:56 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

 The Israeli occupation government arrested a Palestinian political prisoner from Gaza Wednesday under an unlawful combatant law, minutes after releasing him.

Muhammad Abdel-Halim Fawzi Bawadi finished a seven year prison sentence by the Israelis. When he reached the Beit Hanoun border crossing to Gaza upon his release, authorities arrested him a second time.

A similar pattern was noticed in 2005, when Nassar Abbad was arrested at the Beit Hanoun crossing after serving a seven year term in Israeli occupation prisons.

Israel approved the "unlawful combatant" law, after pulling out of the Gaza Strip in December, 2005, to circumvent international laws protecting civilians. The law allows Israel to keep Gazans in detention until a suggested date without stating a release date, placing charges, offering evidence, or providing a trial. Israel had previously used to hold Gaza captives in administrative detention, but needed something to replace it after withdrawing its troops from the Strip. A total of eight prisoners are kept behind bars, under the "unlawful combatant" law all of them from the Gaza Strip. Most of them had completed the prison terms they were sentenced to by Israel.

Sawasya: Israel's measures against detainees are a systematic torture crime

[ 19/01/2011 - 10:41 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

Sawasya center for human rights condemned the Israeli occupation government measures pursued against Palestinian political prisoners as a systematic torture crime and called for holding Israel accountable in accordance with international conventions against torture.

The center said the Israeli prison administrations deliberately deprive Palestinian detainees of their most basic rights and flout all international laws and agreements including Geneva conventions that protect the rights of prisoners.  

The center urged the Red Cross to assume its moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestinian prisoners and send a committee to investigate their imprisonment conditions in Israeli jails.

In this regard, Wa'ed society for detainees strongly denounced the attempted assassination of a Palestinian prisoner in Beersheba jail by an Israeli intelligence agent who was placed among Palestinian detainees to kill some detainees.

The society considered this new method is part of Israel's crimes against Palestinian prisoners that escalated lately.

Wa'ed underlined that the number of detainees killed directly or indirectly by Israel in its jails since 1967 are estimated at 200 Palestinians, and the number of patients amounted to 1200 detainees, 30 of them are permanently in Ramle prison hospital.

For its part, the Palestinian ministry for prisoners' affairs appealed to international human rights organizations and the Red Cross to form an inquiry committee to investigate the mysterious death of 52 patients in Israeli jails, especially since the Israeli prison authority did not declare the real causes of their death.

This appeal came after the failed attempted assassination that was carried out by the Shin Bet against prisoner Haitham Salhiya who is serving several life sentences.

The ministry called for knowing the nature of the drug which was used by an Israel agent to spike the victim's drink.

The ministry also said it had warned many times before of Israeli attempts to kill prisoners, either directly through opening fire or torture or indirectly through deliberate medical neglect.

Beersheba prisoners had told the ministry that a Shin Bet officer instructed an inside agent to spike the target's coffee with a suspicious red pill, the prisoner began experiencing stroke symptoms after the agent carried out the hit.

Prisoners said the prison administration's medical neglect of the prisoner's life implied involvement in a conspiracy. The agent was removed from the section after admitting his involvement to prisoners.