RAMALLAH, August 26, 2015 (WAFA) – The Israeli prison authorities placed a Palestinian prisoner in solitary confinement back in April 2014, and continues to detain him until this moment in cruel conditions, according to the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs (CPA).
Prisoner, Issam Zain Eddin, 31, from Nablus, has now been in solitary confinement in Asqalan prison since April of last year, and has been forced into a cell that lacks the basic humanitarian standards, according to his attorney, Kareem Ajwa, who was recently allowed to visit him.
Zain Eddin, who is suffering stomachache and skin rashes, has also been denied medical healthcare as well as family visitation rights by the prison authorities, Ajwa added. Zain Eddin was arrested back in 2006 and is serving a life sentence.
The prisoner has requested to enjoy his right in family visits, but was denied repeatedly. According to Zain Eddin the prison administration transfers prisoners placed under solitary confinement from one prison to another regularly and on purpose to build on their sense of instability.
Borrowing the description of Zain Eddin, solitary confinement cells resemble graves. The prisoners, who are cut off from the world, have to endure the unbearable living conditions and lack of connections with the outside world.
CPA, Chairman Qaraqe Issa, said some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are serving a sentence of +15 years in prison, including 30 prisoners serving a 20-year jail sentence.
He stressed, in a statement Wednesday, that any political or peace initiative shall include the release of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
To be noted, solitary confinement is widely used in Israeli prisons against Palestinian political prisoners, and has at times led the prisoners to go on hunger strikes.
Detainees in solitary confinement are held in empty cells containing only a mattress and a blanket, and rely on the Israeli Prison Service to address all other needs.
Adalah, a Haifa-based human rights group, says that “solitary confinement of Palestinian political prisoners who are classified as “security prisoners” is doubly harsh because of the restrictions imposed on their contacts outside of prison, even when they are not held in isolation.”
“All types of solitary confinement in prison should end, given its severe impact on the physical and psychological health of prisoners,” Adalah adds.
“Solitary confinement constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment and thus violates the International Covenant Against Torture (CAT) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Israel Medical Association and Ministry of Health should strongly oppose its use as a method of imprisonment.”
M.N/M.H
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