Thursday 30 September 2010

Rights group: Abu Ghalma detention unlawful

[ 29/09/2010 - 07:36 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Supreme National Committee to support prisoners called on rights organizations to step in to free Linan Yousef Abu Ghalma, 28, from solitary confinement in the Hasharon prison and to stop the use of intentional abuse against her, calling her detention “unlawful”.

The committee said in a statement on Wednesday that Abu Ghalma of the Nablus town of Beit Furik had previously spent five years of a six year sentence in Israeli jails before she was freed along with 20 other prisoners in exchange for a tape of captured Israeli soldier Galid Shalit.

Her brother Ahed is serving a life sentence for allegations of collusion in killing Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi and has been languishing in solitary confinement for the past eight months.

Linan was the wife of Amjad Meleitat, who was killed in July of 2004 in a resistance operation. He was a leader in the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, which is the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The committee said Israeli authorities have isolated Abu Ghalma since she was rearrested two and a half months back during a raid of her sister’s home in Nablus. Israeli courts transferred her to administrative detention for three months.

The rights committee says the Hasharon prison administration deliberately inconveniences her and isolates her from the prison population. She is not permitted to leave for recreation and to see her lawyer, and she has been restricted from receiving clothes from family members.

The prison authorities refuse to put her in the same cell as her sister, although the two have been placed in solitary confinement in the same section of the prison.

The prisoners committee is calling on international organizations for woman’s affairs and human rights to play a role in pressuring Israel to release Abu Ghalma and all female prisoners, especially those of them with children.

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