Several detainees confined to solitary cells as punishment for objecting to collective punishment

Monday April 23, 2007 23:16 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

The administration of the Ofer Israeli detention facility, near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, confined several detainees to solitary cells for objecting to the human rights violations against them and to the collective punishment policies.

Palestinian detainees

The administration claimed that the detainees refused to comply with prison administration orders to transfer several detainees to different rooms inside the facility.

One of the detainees, identified as Hasan Yousef Bani-Nimra, 30, from the West Bank city of Salfit, and four other detainees from villages near Ramallah, were confined to solitary cells for one week, and forced to pay 750 New Israeli Shekels fine.

The administration also decided to bar the five detainees from their visitation rights for four months.

Parents of the detainees and several human rights groups in Palestine slammed the violations against the detainees. They demanded that the administration release them from solitary confinement, and stop the continuous attacks and violations against them.

Nearly 11,000 detainees are currently imprisoned by Israel, among them 64 detainees who were imprisoned more than twenty years ago. Almost half of this total figure has not undergone trial.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) reported that 371 detainees were kidnapped by the army before the Oslo peace agreement in 1994; 51 of them are from Jerusalem, 22 are Arab residents of Israel, 141 from the Gaza Strip, 144 from the occupied West Bank, 4 from the occupied Golan Heights, 1 from Lebanon, and four from Jordan.

186 Palestinians were taken prisoner in the period between the Oslo agreement and the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada September 28, 2000.

56 detainees were kidnapped by the army more than twenty years ago, eight detainees were kidnapped more than twenty-five years ago; one of them is detainees Sa’id Al Ataba, he was abducted by the army thirty years ago.

palestine | prisoners | news report saed at imemc dot org