Additional Palestinian political prisoners have taken up hunger strikes in protest of prison authorities’ practices.
Ameer al-Shammas declared hunger strike on January 11, 2014, protesting his administrative detention and isolation. He was arrested on September 3, 2013 and held in Ashkelon interrogation centre for over a month and a half, then sentenced to administrative detention. He was held in solitary confinement and then moved to Ramle prison hospital due to his recent health deterioration.
Saber Suleiman launched an open-ended hunger strike on January 25 demanding his release from Moskobiya interrogation centre, where he was tortured.
On January 15, 2014, Osama Shweiki and Mohammad Al-Batran launched hunger strikes, reported the Palestinian Prisoners Society after Azzam Shweiki, Osama’s brother, visited him. They launched an open hunger strike to protest their transfer to solitary confinement in Megiddo.
The Palestine Centre for Prisoners Studies reported that Iyad Astete has been on hunger strike since February 1, 2014. Astete, from Jenin, has been detained since June 2006 and is serving a prison sentence of 16 years.
He has started a hunger strike protesting against the Israeli authorities’ refusal to transfer him from Ashkelon prison to the northern jails which are close to his residence area. Astete said that the conditions in Ashkelon’s solitary confinement cells are very bad, and that he has been deprived of buying from the canteen and of receiving family visits for two months and a half.
These hunger strikers join fellow Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike:
- Akram al-Fassisi, held in administrative detention without charge or trial since November 2012, who has engaged in previous hunger strikes that he was forced to end due to ill health, began a new open-ended hunger strike on January 9, 2014. (Profile from Addameer)
- Waheed Abu Maria, also held in administrative detention without charge or trial since November 2012, launched an open-ended hunger strike against administrative detention on January 9, 2014.
- Muammar Banat, also in administrative detention without charge or trial, joined in this open-ended hunger strike on January 9, 2014.
- Abdul Majeed Khudairat, who has engaged in hunger strikes in the past, launched his open-ended hunger strike in protest of his re-arrest after his release in the prisoner exchange agreement of October 2011. He began his strike on January 15.
- Musa Soufan of Tulkarem, sentenced to life imprisonment plus five years, launched a hunger strike on January 25, 2014, protesting against medical neglect and delay in treatment; he has a tumor under his left ear and needs an operation to remove the tumor but has received only painkillers and has been isolated rather than moved to the hospital.
- Hossam Yousef Omar also launched a hunger strike on January 25, 2014; he is being held in isolation in Megiddo prison and is demanding an end to his solitary confinement.
