HRW urges Israel to end arbitrary detention of anti-wall protesters

PIC

[ 07/03/2010 - 05:39 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Human rights watch on Sunday demanded Israel to put an immediate end to the arbitrary detention of Palestinian activists who participate in peaceful anti-wall marches in West Bank villages.

In a report, the human rights watch noted that Israel is building most of its segregation wall inside the West Bank rather than along the green line, in violation of international humanitarian law.

According to the report, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) in recent months have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.

Israel detained Palestinians who advocate non-violent protests against the segregation wall and charged them based on questionable evidence including confessions taken under coercion.

Israel also denied detainees from villages that have staged protests against the wall, including children, access to lawyers and family members. Many of the protests have been in villages that lost substantial areas of land when the wall was built.

“Israel arrests people for peacefully protesting a barrier built illegally on their lands that harms their livelihoods," Sarah Whitson, the HRW Middle East director said.

"The Israeli authorities are effectively banning peaceful expression of political speech by bringing spurious charges against demonstrators, plus detaining children and adults without basic due process protection," she added.

In the meanwhile, the IOF troops kidnapped at dawn Sunday three Palestinian citizens during incursions into different West Bank areas and another one at Al-Hamra checkpoint in the Jordan valley area.

The Hebrew radio claimed that the troops at the checkpoint detained the young man after they found three explosive devices in his possession.

For its part, the family of prisoner Mohamed Abu Lebda held the IOA fully responsible for the life of their son after he became fully paralyzed and appealed to the Red Cross to send a medical delegation to visit him and work on his release.

The family affirmed that their son suffered nothing when he was detained in 2000, but his exposure to severe torture in Israeli jails led to a disability in his legs, adding that their son, afterwards, became paralyzed and moves in a wheelchair because of the medical neglect policy at Israeli occupation prisons.

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