Palestine Chronicle:
“Prisoners are subjected to brutal and retaliatory attacks, and there are fears of the loss and killing of prisoners every day.”
The Palestinian Prisoners Club accused the Israeli Prison Service on Tuesday of carrying out brutal attacks on Palestinian detainees in recent days, after storming their cells to retaliate for allegedly celebrating the Iranian bombing of Israel.
“Israeli repression forces stormed the prisoners’ cells, accompanied by police dogs, and assaulted them with batons and tear gas after handcuffing them,” the organization’s President Amjad al-Najjar said, according to an Al Jazeera Arabic report.
Al-Najjar cited a video documenting a brutal attack by Israeli special forces on Palestinian prisoners under the pretext that they were celebrating the Iranian bombing of Israel.
He believed that the Israeli authorities are singling out prisoners, given the global and media preoccupation with the Israeli attack on Iran.
“Prisoners are subjected to brutal and retaliatory attacks, and there are fears of the loss and killing of prisoners every day,” al-Najjar stated.
Call to UN, Rights Groups
He noted that Palestinian institutions concerned with prisoners’ affairs have sent letters to the United Nations and human rights organizations regarding these attacks against prisoners during the current war.
The Palestinian official stated that during the 19 months of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, 72 prisoners were killed in Israeli prisons.
Describing this figure as frightening, al-Najaar said that, in comparison, only nine detainees died in the 20 years of the infamous American Guantanamo Bay prison.
This, he reportedly said, reflects the scale and gravity of the crimes committed in Israeli prisons, which exceed those committed anywhere else in the world.
Al-Najjar called on human rights organizations and countries to work to “restrain Israeli behavior, which is carried out under the orders of the political echelon of the Israeli government.”
Lawyer Visits Canceled
The Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said on Tuesday that the Israeli Prison Service decided to cancel lawyer visits to detainees indefinitely, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
In a joint statement, the Commission and the Prisoners’ Club said this move, effective immediately, is attributed to “exceptional circumstances facing detainees since the beginning of the genocide,” a situation that is reportedly exacerbating their isolation and heightening anxieties regarding their fate.
They vehemently condemned the decision, noting its troubling coincidence with the postponement of hearings by Israeli military courts. Despite these postponements, sessions for detention extensions and hearings for administrative detainees are reportedly being maintained.
The organizations emphasized that this measure represents a further extension of a “policy of comprehensive isolation” against detainees, which they state has been in practice since the onset of the genocide, WAFA reported.
Denial of Family Visits
This policy “includes the denial of family visits, the prohibition of visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the confiscation of detainees’ personal belongings, which would otherwise allow them to monitor external events.”
Israel ‘Brutally Attacks’ Palestinian Detainees Accused of Celebrating Iran’s Strikes
