[ 16/10/2008 - 10:06 AM ]RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation interrogators have forced Palestinian female detainee Sana Salah of Bethlehem city to remove her headscarf (Hijab) during interrogation sessions at the Maskobeyya detention center in occupied Jerusalem.
Salah revealed her experience to lawyer of the Palestinian prisoner club who visited her Wednesday in jail where she also added that six Israeli investigators were questioning her for 8 continuous hours with her hands and feet chained.
She also added that the Zionist officers beat and slapped her on the face in addition to uttering insults.
"I stayed in Maskobeyya detention for one month and a half without being given a change of clothes for the first 20 days", Salah affirmed, adding she suffers from chest pains, and weakness in the right eye.
For her part, Palestinian lady legislator MP Muna Mansour of Hamas's parliamentary bloc urged the PA agencies and institutions to seriously work for the release of all Palestinian female captives in Israeli jails.
Mansour's remarks came as she paid a visit to houses of a number of Palestinian female captives in Ramallah city as a sign of solidarity with the female captives and their families.
16/10/2008Two Palestinian girls detained in Israel without trial for months
By Fadi Eyadat
On the night of June 5, someone knocked on the door of the Salah house in Khader, near Bethlehem. Had it not been 2 A.M., nobody in the family would even have been suspicious. Nevertheless, said Siham Salah, her eldest daughter, Salwa, opened the door.
"Soldiers and a [Shin Bet security service] officer entered," Siham related. "They sat down calmly and began to ask questions about members of the household. They asked how many children we had and about the fact that there are problems in our neighborhood. Suddenly, they went outside, brought in female soldiers and took my daughter.
"I told the officer she's a girl, all of 16, studying for her matriculation exams, and that she never had any involvement in politics or belonged to any organization. He ignored me. I began to scream; Salwa began to cry and shouted at me: 'Mother, don't let them take me!' But the soldiers shut me into an inside room and kidnapped her."
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Only two months later did Siham finally see her daughter again, in the Damoun Prison near Haifa. There, she discovered that her 16-year-old cousin Sara had also been arrested. Both girls were being held in administrative detention, or detention without trial.
Since then, four months have gone by. Last week, the girls' detentions were extended by another three months. But the Salah family still does not even know why their daughter was arrested, and all their efforts to find out have been in vain.
According to attorney Sahar Francis, who is representing both girls, the security services "claim they are dangerous, based on classified information. We tried in court to ask the prosecutor the nature of their 'dangerousness': Did they act alone? What was their role? But we didn't receive any answers. And other than an initial interrogation at the time they were arrested, neither has been questioned."
Altogether, some 600 Palestinians are in administrative detention in Israel, including about 15 minors who do not even know why they are being detained.
Some 100 people organized by the Coalition of Women for Peace protested Wednesday opposite the prison to demand that Salwa and Sara be released. "We oppose the use of administrative detention, because it is undemocratic," said Adi Dagan, one of the demonstration's organizers. "It is part of the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. And we're talking about two schoolgirls. No one even knows why they are being held in jail."
The Re'ut-Sadaka youth movement has collected some 500 signatures, mostly from other youths, on a petition demanding that the girls either be indicted or released.
Siham Salah said that the first time she saw her daughter in jail, "she was in a difficult emotional state. She cried and asked us to get her out of there. She's a baby, a girl who lived from school to home and back again. That very day [of her arrest], she had signed up for matriculation prep classes in English and math. Today, when I see the girls of her class going to school, I burst out crying."
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PALESTINIAN WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS
As a result of their visible activity in the current Intifada, Palestinian women have not escaped the mass arrest campaigns. Palestinian women in detention are subjected to mistreatment on a daily basis and are often held in cells and sections with Israeli criminal prisoners. Regular body searches are performed with brutality by prison guards; sexual harassment occurs frequently; the right to elect a representative for their collective demands is not recognized as in other prisons; solitary confinement is often used as a form of punishment; detainees are prohibited from going outside regularly or of using the canteen; cell searches and confiscation of personal belongings is a common practice; and attacks on women by beating or firing tear gas into cells occur regularly.
At the end of 2004, there were over 120 Palestinian women being held by Israeli authorities. The number has steadily increased over the years of the Intifada making this the largest number of female detainees held by Israel in two-decades. Female prisoners are placed in 2 central prisons, Neve Tresta and Hasharon-Telmond.
17 of these women are mothers, two women, Mervat Taha and Manal Ghanem, gave birth while in detention and Manal continues to live with her child, Nour, inside the prison. Mervat was recently released with her son, Wa'el, now 2 years old has lived his entire life inside the prison. There are currently eight girls (under age 18) inside Israeli jails in addition to a number of women who have turned 18 while they were imprisoned. Israel detains children as young as 12 years old, in blatant contravention of the internationally accepted designation of any individual under the age of 18 as a child. Israeli military regulations stipulate that a child is anyone under the age of 16, whilst Israeli law stipulates this age to be under 18.
Many Palestinian women prisoners are transferred to Neve Tertza Prison, one of six sections of Ramleh Prison after their interrogation process. Here Palestinian female detainees remain detained within the same section as Israeli criminal female prisoners accused of crimes such as murder, theft, drug use, and prostitution. Mixing Palestinian prisoners with Israeli criminal prisoners has created a great deal of tension within the prison, particularly as political prisoners should be separated from other categories of prisoners.
The prison administration continues to humiliate Palestinian female prisoners by forcing them to strip in front of prison guards while their hands are cuffed, and then to dress before these same guards. The administration conducts regular searches of prison cells, confiscating personal property and papers.
The prison administration has diligently worked at breaking the unity of the female detainees by isolating them from the outside world and preventing family visits. Correspondence to and from the prison is also prohibited, and newspapers are allowed in the prison but are delayed by a few days. Visits amongst other prisoners are prevented and daily breaks have been reduced to half an hour. Palestinian women prisoners at Neve Tertza Prison reported that their conditions of detention were extremely difficult, with no glass protecting windows in the cells and insects and vermin found throughout the prison. Because of the prevention of family visits, prisoners do not have adequate winter clothing or extra food to supplement the small food portions they receive in prison.
Some Palestinian female prisoners have been arrested as a means of placing pressure on their husbands. Asma' Abu el-Hayja, for example, who is 40 years old and is suffering from brain cancer, is being held in an administrative detention in order to pressure her husband who is also under detention. Mrs. Ablaa' Saadat was arrested on 21 January 2003 as she travelled as a Palestinian representative to the World Social Forum in Brazil. Saadat is the wife of the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She was give four months administrative detention following her arrest. She was told by an interrogator that her arrest was merely a demonstration that 'they' can do whatever they want. She was also told that if her husband had 'blood on his hands' they would kill her children.
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