Israel kidnaps about 500 Palestinian children every year - 70,000 Palestinians jailed since intifada

Report: 70,000 Palestinians jailed since intifada

[ 30/09/2010 - 12:31 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- The Prisoner Studies Center issued Thursday on the tenth anniversary of the Aqsa intifada a comprehensive report which found that Israeli authorities have since the intifada arrested 70,000 Palestinians, around 6,800 of whom remain scattered in more than 20 prisons and detention centers in inhumane conditions.

The center said there are nearly 300 minors in the Damon, Megiddo, Hawara, and other prisons and 35 female inmates in the Hasharoun and Damon prisons. There are around 210 prisoners in administrative detention, dubbed “unlawful combatants”, whose terms have ended, or who are held without charges or tried under undemocratic emergency laws.

There are a number of politicians and dozens of prisoners who have been in solitary confinement for long years and more than 1,000 sick prisoners. There are 750 war prisoners from the Gaza Strip and hundreds of others from the West Bank who have been denied visits from family for the last four years.

Violations against the prisoners include banning visits against hundreds of prisoners, denying them the right to finish secondary studies, ill-treatment of minor prisoners, night searches, unreasonable rulings in the military courts, serving unclean food, moving prisoners repeatedly from room to room, sector to sector, or prison to prison, and violations of courts’ extensions of detention.

The report highlighted that the prison administration uses solitary confinement as a punishment for the most minor cases, adding that the length of seclusion may range from hours to years depending on the verdict of prison officials. There is a solitary confinement section and areas designated for long-term seclusion in each jail.

Ansar Al-Asra: Israel kidnaps about 500 Palestinian children every year

[ 30/09/2010 - 12:44 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Ansar Al-Asra, a human rights organization, reported Thursday that Israel kidnapped about 500 Palestinian prisoners under age 18 every year and there are still 310 of them in its jails.

The organization affirmed that Israel invented racist military laws allowing it to arrest and torture Palestinian prisoners, adding that the repeated international condemnations did not deter it from its violations against them.

It noted that Israel identified Palestinian children as those under age 16, while Israeli children as those under age 18 and uses its law number 132 to justify the arrest and prosecution of Palestinian children.

Some of the Israeli violations mentioned in its report said that Palestinian children in Israeli jails are threatened if they do not cooperate they will be raped and killed or their families will be harmed, and sometimes they are placed in private rooms with grown-up criminals to pressure them.

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