Israeli occupation forces stormed section 5 of Ramon prison today, Sunday 1 October, closing multiple sections of the prison and transferring all of the 90 prisoners held there to section 10 of Nafha prison. This includes Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The prisoners were not allowed to bring any of their personal belongings with them, and they were told they would not be returned to Ramon prison.
This comes days after occupation forces ransacked several prisoners’ rooms in section 5 of Ramon prison; they also transferred several Palestinian political prisoners to solitary confinement and one, Mazen al-Qadi, to interrogation.
The Zionist prison administration routinely uses transfers and raids to disrupt the prisoners’ lives as well as their organizing, ransack and confiscate their belongings and undermine their sense of stability. Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Sa’adat’s comrade and fellow prisoner, wrote: “These movements aim to confuse the prisoners, undermine their stability and that of the organizational work inside prisons. The torment of trips called “Bosta”, which transfer prisoners between prisons and courts, is a severe form of torture.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine expressed its outrage at the transfer of Sa’adat, and there is a high level of tension among the PFLP prisoners in occupation prisons. The prisoners are on alert and prepared to take steps of struggle to confront the latest attacks upon the prisoners’ movement. In a statement, the PFLP said, “This attack targeting the leadership of the Popular Front is an integral part of the comprehensive attack on the captive movement, which did not stop and has increased further after the fascist and racist criminal Ben Gvir took over the so-called Zionist Ministry of Internal Security.”
Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the PFLP, has been jailed in occupation prisons since 2006, following 4 years in Palestinian Authority prisons under U.S., British and Canadian guards. He has repeatedly been subjected to isolation, interrogation and sudden transfer in order to remove him from his leading role in the prisoners’ movement.
There are currently approximately 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners in occupation prisons, including over 1,300 jailed without charge or trial under “administrative detention,” in which Palestinians can be detained indefinitely by an occupation military court.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses its strongest solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners confronting Zionist colonial incarceration and tactics of repression. We urge the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners — a necessary step toward the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
