Commission of Detainees’ Affairs: The administration of Nafaha Prison deliberately obstructs the advocates’ visit to detainees

الموقع الاخباري الرسمي لمنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية

Commission of Detainees’ Affairs:

The administration of Nafaha Prison deliberately obstructs the advocates’ visit to detainees

May 17, 2024

The Commission of Detainees’ Affairs reported that the administration of Nafaha Prison intended to obstruct the advocates’ visits to detainees through procrastination in bringing them to the visit room and providing security pretexts, as the process takes more than one hour and a half for each detainee, which enabled the legal team of the commission to visit 4 detainees out of 8 over the past two days.

The commission said that the legal team was able to visit the detainees Kamal Abu Shanab from Jenin, Haitham Salhiya and Malik Hamed from Ramallah and Nael Najjar from Gaza, while they couldn’t visit Husam Shaheen, Alaa Bazyan, Sedqi Zarou and Nidal Zalloum, due to the complications imposed by the prison’s administration.

The commission emphasized that its advocates conveyed the plight of detainees and their difficult conditions, where detainees confirmed the continuation of the abusive procedures that started on October 7, represented in beating, cursing, starvation, isolation and ignoring sick detainees and depriving them of medication. They pointed out that the pace of prison’s administration measures goes up and down, but in general, the living conditions have not change much in cruelty since the first day of the war.

Detainees informed the legal team about the overcrowding in rooms and sections, which forced many of them to sleep on the ground, in the light of clothes and covers lack. Their rooms are empty, their weight decreased sharply and this is apparent on their bodies and features. They get transferred on a daily basis between rooms and sections, and during this process, they get exposed to beat, cursing and humiliation.

The Commission warns of the unethical and inhumane treatment of detainees in Nafaha Prison, especially that the majority of them are serving long-terms, life sentences and spent long years in prison. Detainees used sign language during the visit  to express the seriousness of the situation and their living conditions, out of fear of exposing themselves to beat and torture after the visit, which actually happened to tens of them over the past few months.