[ 08/02/2009 - 06:07 PM ]
GAZA, (PIC)-- The Mizan center for human rights reported that it filed four complaints with the Israeli military prosecutor and the legal advisor to the Israeli government demanding them to conduct an investigation into the torture of Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip kidnapped during the last Israeli war.
In a press statement received on Sunday by the PIC, the center underlined that the information obtained by its lawyer based on testimonies of prisoners released recently confirmed that the IOF troops had tortured and maltreated them.
According to the testimonies, the IOF troops were using batons and rifle butts to beat the prisoners as well as they were shackling and blindfolding prisoners in painful positions for long hours.
The center expressed its strong condemnation of the Israeli persistence in committing serious and organized violations against the rules of international humanitarian law and human rights principles especially the convention against torture.
It re-emphasized that the convention against torture stipulates, in the second article, that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
Mizan also recalled that the same article of the convention states that an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
The center called on the international community especially the high contracting parties to the Geneva convention and the committee on the convention against torture to work on stopping the Israeli torture practices against Palestinian prisoners and to consider measures to compel Israel to abide by human rights standards when dealing with them.
Israeli prisons escalate measures against Palestinians refusing orange uniforms
[ 08/02/2009 - 11:55 AM ]
GAZA, (PIC)-- The ministry of prisoners' affairs in Gaza reported that the Israeli prison authority stepped up recently its arbitrary measures against the Palestinian prisoners who refuse to wear the orange uniforms.
Riyadh-Al-Ashqar, the director of the information office in the ministry, said that the Israeli prison administrations have been trying for several months to impose by force an orange uniform on the Palestinian prisoners who unanimously refused to wear it.
Ashqar pointed out that this uniform is known worldwide as uniform worn by prisoners sentenced to death and those held in the notorious Guantanamo detention camp, adding that some administrators in Israeli jails stated publically that the Palestinian prisoners must be treated as terrorist and not as war or political prisoners.
The official affirmed that the Israeli prison authority faced the prisoners' refusal to wear this uniform through escalating its arbitrary and punitive measures against them such as preventing them from seeing their families or receiving clothes from the Red Cross, and also imposing heavy fines on them.
The official revealed that these punitive actions did not spare the children as happened in the Telmond prison, where the Israeli jailers there deprive them of many of their needs and tear their clothes during investigation to force them to wear orange uniforms.
In another context, the Hamas Movement called on the security apparatuses of ex-PA chief Mahmoud Abbas to immediately release Ghanem Sualmeh who was kidnapped shortly after his release from Israeli jails.
In a statement issued Saturday, Hamas underlined that instead of honoring and congratulating the prisoner on his release from the hell of Israeli prisons, he found himself imprisoned in Palestinian jails at the hands of security apparatuses claiming to be sponsoring a national project that embraces every Palestinian.
Hamas said that the prisoner suffered greatly in Israel's jails and was one of those who were deported to Gaza for two years, adding that he is a prominent Palestinian reformer in the Balata refugee camp and known for his morality and integrity.
Hamas criticized some members of the PLC and human rights institutions for monitoring any lapse happening in Gaza regardless of its credibility and raising their voice in criticism while their voice is not heard now when a national figure like Sualmeh is kidnapped by the security apparatuses in the West Bank.
Palestinian local sources reported Saturday night that elements of the preventive security apparatus and the intelligence raided homes of Hamas supporters in the Tulkarem city and the Anabta town, east of Tulkarem resulted so far in the kidnapping of eight citizens.
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