Hunger strikers subjected to retaliation in Israeli prisons

The Palestine Information Centre reported that the Israeli prison service (IPS) has organized summary trials for dozens of Palestinian prisoners as a penal measure for going on hunger strike, prisoners told the PIC on Thursday.

They said that many prisoners were punished by visit deprivation, fines, and canteen denial in those trials, which took place over the past few days.

They pointed out that the IPS imposed an undeclared curfew on the prisoners and completely isolated them from the outside world, as they were deprived of visitation and the daily stroll outside their cells.

For its part, the Ahrar center for human rights said that the IPS moved 165 prisoners from Megiddo jail to Gilboa and Shatta prisons including 140 affiliated with Hamas and 25 with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

It said that the prisoners had gone on hunger strike on 22 April and were jammed into small cells, each nine inmates crammed in a room made for six.