Families of long-serving detainees urge Shalit captors to uphold their demands

PIC

[ 07/12/2009 - 09:30 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Palestinian families of prisoners on Saturday called on the captors of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to stick to their demands for the release of long-serving Palestinians from jails after they were neglected by previous swap deals.

In their meeting with officials in the ministry of prisoners and Wa’ed society, the families expressed their concern about news reports which sometimes drive them to despair and make them in constant fear for the future of their sons, hoping that the swap deal would take place soon.

The families also stressed that the completion of the prisoner swap deal without the release of the long-serving detainees from Israeli jails will be meaningless.

For his part, Mohamed Al-Katari, assistant deputy minister of prisoners’ affairs, affirmed that the Palestinian resistance will never conclude a deal excluding the long-serving detainees.

Katari noted that the prisoner swap talks are taking place secretly and away from the media and any information in this regard are made up by the Israeli media to negatively affect the moral of prisoners and their families.

In another context, Al-Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies and human rights reported Sunday that the Israeli occupation authority released Mustafa Al-Shannar, a Palestinian professor at Al-Najah university after two years of administrative detention.

Shannar was kidnapped during a campaign carried out by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) in Nablus in December 2007 that led to the kidnapping of dozens of Hamas supporters and academics.