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Palestinian Female Detainees detail Horrific Accounts of Abuse in Israeli Prisons

وَمَا لَكُمْ لاَ تُقَـتِلُونَ فِى سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَالْمُسْتَضْعَفِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالنِّسَآءِ وَالْوِلْدَنِ الَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَآ أَخْرِجْنَا مِنْ هَـذِهِ الْقَرْيَةِ الظَّـلِمِ أَهْلُهَا وَاجْعَلْ لَّنَا مِن لَّدُنْكَ وَلِيّاً وَاجْعَلْ لَّنَا مِن لَّدُنْكَ نَصِيراً ﴿

{And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah and the oppressed among men, women, and children who say, “Our Lord, take us out of this city of oppressive people and appoint for us from Yourself a protector and appoint for us from Yourself a helper?”}

Throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, around 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli authorities, more than 10,000 of whom are women. Many of those female detainees were subjected to several forms of abuse, sexual in particular, but very few were willing to talk. On the eve of International Women’s Day, however, some decided to break their silence.

S.H., who refused to disclose her full name, was arrested for a few days to put pressure on her husband, also detained at the time, and extract confessions from him.

They stripped me and the officer who was interrogating me sat beside me and tried to molest me but I resisted,” she told al-Arabiya.

Hanaa Shalabi, the 30-year-old prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for 21 days in protest of the humiliation to which she was subjected in detention, said that an officer in civil clothes claimed he was a nurse at the prison and asked her to take off her clothes so he could search her.

When I refused, he called other officers who tied me up and started beating me,” she said in a statement to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

Shalabi’s lawyer Mahmoud Hassan said that one of the female officers wanted her to take off all her clothes in front of the other interrogators for the search.

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Posted by on March 9, 2012 in News Items

 

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The 1996 Libyan Prison Massacare

“…1,200 inmates were killed, out of a population of roughly 1,700…”


Anwar Haraga was 26 when men from Libya’s Internal Security agency came to his door in Tripoli one night.

It was 1989. Haraga was newly married and had just returned from five years of study in England. He was heading toward a promising career in computer engineering.

But Haraga had a problem. He wore a beard and traditional Arab Islamic clothes, and he prayed regularly. In Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, that made him guilty of zindaka, or heresy, a crime prosecutred zealously by Gaddafi’s internal security forces.

Haraga was taken to Abu Salim prison in southwest Tripoli, home to more than 1,000 political prisoners and fellow “heretics”. He spent the next 11 years in custody.

During his time in Abu Salim, Haraga said, he also bore witness to one of the most notorious episodes in Libya’s modern history – the massacre of hundreds of prisoners in 1996.

Though Gaddafi himself alluded to the killings eight years after the fact, the Abu Salim massacre has always been shrouded in mystery, a cornerstone in the opposition’s hatred for the regime. Families in Benghazi began regular protests in recent years over the lack of information about the killings, and it was the arrest of Fathi Terbil, a human rights lawyer representing some of the Abu Salim families, that sparked demonstrations in February that swelled into a revolution.

Libyan human rights groups outside the country say up to 1,200 inmates were killed, out of a population of roughly 1,700. Only a few witnesses have come forward; one spoke to Human Rights Watch in 2004 and 2006. But the Libyan government has never given a detailed account.

Haraga, who recently returned from Manchester to aid the revolution against Gaddafi, spoke with Al Jazeera on Friday evening just outside the cells where the killings allegedly took place. He was touring the prison with a former cellmate, Mohammed Tukmak, revisiting his own cell for the first time since arriving in Gaddafi-less Tripoli.

Haraga offered new details about the events that led to the massacre, and a first-person account of the horror. Details of his story are corroborated by the accounts received by Human Rights Watch.

The three mujahideen

It all began in the summer of 1996, Haraga said, when guards brought in three new prisoners. Like other Libyans, the men had traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the Russian invasion and, later, against other groups of mujahideen. At some point during the conflict, they had been arrested by Pakistani authorities and extradited back to Libya.

Haraga remembered it clearly – the men were placed in Cell 9, Block 4. Each block extends roughly 10 cells deep in either direction off of a main corridor. Each cell held around 25 men. Haraga and his cellmates were in Block 2.

Before the new men arrived, 13 inmates had escaped from Cell 7 in Block 1, and prison conditions had deteriorated. The inmates received only plain pasta in meager portions. Guards beat them when they left their cells for any reason.    Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on September 7, 2011 in News Items

 

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The Wife of Mohammed Al-Haajib Describes the Horror of Tulal Prison, Morocco

On Wednesday, 20th July last I went to visit my husband Mohamed Hajib with his mother and two of my children. I was very nervous to say the least, because I hadnt seen my husband since the 8th May last, before he was transported to Tulal prison Meknes on the 17th of May, tortured, hospitalized and all of his belongings stolen from prison Zaki Sale.

We were only allowed to bring water and pre-cooked food, and the fresh underwear etc. which we brought for him, were given back to us. We were then called into the visiting room, where my husband was waiting with a prison guard on either side of him. I got a fright on seeing him. He has lost a lot of weight, is very slim, pale and messy looking, as opposed to the broad, tall, very well groomed, healthy man I am used to seeing. I was distraught.

My husband and I speak to oneanother in German, and always have done (we met as students in Germany). When I started to speak to my husband, the prison guards literally panicked, and told me to stop talking, due to the fact that they were unable to understand what I was saying. I refused to do so, and after five minutes we were told to leave. I found Mohamed very quiet, disturbingly quiet, I was very bothered, but he continued to say to his mother and I – “dont worry”. It was if he was afraid to say anything infront of the prison guards.

My husband stood behind a fence from ceiling to floor (was quite cage-like, similar to those for animals in the zoo) and we stood behind another. My husband was unable to take his children in his arms. My eldest son, Omar Khattab (nearly six years old), was distraught, and informed me after the visit that he no longer wants to visit his father, because he cant hug and kiss him. This brought tears to my eyes.

He is in a room with nine other detainees. He remains in his room day and night. This was the only information I was able to get out of him in German. I have been unable to get his pale face, and dismal appearance out of my mind since I visited him on Wednesday. I myself am having problems sleeping. I just cant describe his state of mind. Whether he was afraid to speak or he has been to a certain extent disturbed by his experiences over the past two months.

How can this be allowed to happen at a time when the Moroccan Authorities are speaking of the improvement in Human Rights. Please HELP.

If my husband, usually a very healthy man looks run-down, feable and unhealthy, then the prisoners who have health problems, have absolutely no chance at all. May Allah help and protect the ill detainees.

-Wife of Mohammed Al-Haajib, from A Voice for the Political Detainees in Morocco 

 
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Posted by on July 25, 2011 in Collateral Damage, News Items

 

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Concerning Prisoners Held in Sala, Morocco:

From A Voice for the Political Detainees in Morocco:

- There is no news of 3 inmates, they were taken to an unknown location, Amongst them Al-Asali

-Khalid Al-Ayati, was hit with a tear gas canister which caused him to fall from the roof of Sala Prison during the clashes there on the 16th and 17th of May. Subsequently he broke his hand, the prison authorities until now have rejected to administer any treatment to his hand which has resulted in his hand becoming smaller in size and the wound is become infected and beginning to rot. This may lead to his hand being amputated or permanently disfigured and redundant (unusable).

- Akhtif Abdul Lateef, Suffers from many Illnesses and lives on a Quarter of a kidney. He requires many different types of medication to treat his illnesses however he has not been prescribed any medication and hence his conditioned has worsened. He frequently suffers pain from his back and stomach and when it becomes unbearable the prison administration only hand him a pain killer and inform him if he is cooperative they will not hand the pills over to him. He Eats very little (of the terrible food provided; Plain Rice.) and for the past week he has been unable to eat due to the pain, his colour has changed his body is frail and cannot walk nor talk. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on July 25, 2011 in News Items

 

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