Former prisoner Salah Hammouri launched a tour of Europe on September 13, including several cities and towns in France and elsewhere in Europe. He spent 7 years in Israeli jails. Salah is a Palestinian from Jerusalem who also holds French citizenship; he arried in Paris several days ago at the invitation of human rights organizations and French leftist parties to discuss his own experience inside the prisons of the occupation and the struggle of the prisoners – and the Palestinian people – for freedom. He plans to meet with a number of French groups and municipalities, a number of whom honoured him whhile he was imprisoned.
He spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg at the invitation of several Members of European Parliament, speaking about his own experience as well as that of prisoners who have spent over 25 years in Israeli jails, as well as women prisoners and child prisoners. Hammouri pointed out that prisoners represent all sectors of society, from Jerusalem, from Occupied Palestine ’48, from the occupied Golan, Arab prisoners, and discussed the ongoing hunger strikes of Samer al-Barq, Hassan Safadi, and Ayman Sharawna as well as the hunger strike experience of footballer Mahmoud Sarsak, Khader Adnan and others. Hammouri called upon the European Parliament to take up and internationalize the issue of the prisoners, to bring it before their governments and pressure Israel to free Palestinian prisoners, in particular ill prisoners, women prisoners, elderly and child prisoners, as well as prisoners who were detained before Oslo.
