Sunday 6 June 2010

Israel uses Shalit law against prisoners, transfers hundreds of them

[ 06/06/2010 - 02:09 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The higher committee for the support of prisoners said that the Israeli prison administrations have escalated the transfer of Palestinian detainees in its jails since the Knesset started to discuss the Shalit law.

This law is intended to tighten the incarceration condition of Hamas prisoners in particular in order to pressure their Movement to soften its demands regarding the swap deal.

Information director of the committee Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the Knesset approved the first reading of the law that will not take effect before it is voted for in the second and the third reading.

Ashqar added that this process did not prevent the Israeli prison authority from implementing this law before it receives the final approval.

The director explained that the administrations of Ashkelon, Hadarim, Nafha, Beer Sheva and Negev prisons transferred lately hundreds of prisoners to other jails or internal sections.

He stressed that Israel has been pursuing the policy of transfer against prisoners for a long time in the context of systematic actions aimed always to punish them, but this policy escalated in the past two months because of the Shalit law.

In a related context, Palestinian women imprisoned in Damon prison complained that the isolation cells and the visit rooms are unfit for human use and look like barns because of carelessness and misuse of the Israeli criminal convicts.

In a letter leaked from the prison, the female prisoners said the isolation cells and the visit rooms are shared between them and the convicts, saying that they suffer from bugs, rats and the lack of hygiene.

For his part, director of the prisoners’ center for studies Ra’fat Hamduna, who received a copy of the letter, appealed to human rights organizations to pressure Israel to release the Palestinian women in its jails or at least improve their incarceration conditions.

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