Palestinian journalist recounts mistreatment while detained by the P.A

Friday August 29, 2008 22:42 by IMEMC News

Palestinian journalist, Awad Rajoub, 30, was recently released from a Palestinian prison where he was detained and interrogated by Palestinian security forces. He said that he was subjected to mistreatment, and was facing harsh conditions for over a month.

Journalist Awad Rajoub

Rajoub told reporters on Friday that he was in solitary confinement for more than fifteen days in a bad cell and that he had to use his own shoes as a pillow.

 He added that at one point during interrogation his head was covered with a bad-smelling sack which also barred him from seeing the interrogations and anybody around him.

Rajoub also said that he could hear other prisoners being tortured and that he knows that some of them were transferred to hospital due to torture.

 The reporter works with the Arabic news service of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera. He was charged with “writing provocative reports that are considered as undermining national interests”.

 “I was confronted with several reports that I wrote, they believed that these reports would indict me”, he said, “They just do not know how the press functions in a democratic society”.

He also said that Palestinian reporters are being arrested, harassed and threatened in broad daylight, adding that this issue indicates that “something wrong is happening”.

Rajoub also said that the interrogators said that he interviewed political leaders who have views that are not coherent with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. He told the interrogators that as a journalist, he has to interview different people with different opinions and affiliations regardless of his own opinion.

 His family filed a petition to the Palestinian High Court in Ramallah last week and asked the court to order his release as his imprisonment is not legally justified and the security forces had no jurisdiction in civilian issues.

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