Palestinian prisoner Malik Qadi, 19, from Bethlehem, announced an open hunger strike on Thursday, 26 May, in protest of his arrest by occupation forces and his torture under interrogation.
Palestinian lawyer Jacqueline Farajeh met with Qadi in Etzion prison, saying that Qadi had been on hunger strike for three days; he was re-arrested on 23 May shortly after his release from four months in administrative detention without charge or trial. Farajeh reported that Qadi had been arrested by five military jeeps raiding his home; he was held on the floor of a jeep handcuffed for over an hour, and was beaten by soldiers after his arrest. Farajeh noted that Qadi’s left hand and legs were clearly bruised and swollen, noting that he had been beaten during his previous arrest, leaving him with chest injuries that persist to this day.
The Palestinian Authority’s security forces have been detaining Palestinian journalist Tariq Abu Zeid for ten days; Palestinian journalists, including recently freed Palestinian hunger striker and journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq and his wife Fayha Shalash, have protested in Ramallah and Nablus, urging the release of Abu Zeid.
Abu Zeid, who works for Al-Aqsa TV, was arrested in a raid on his home on Monday, 16 May and accused of publishing material harmful to the “resitge of the state;” his detention was extended last Thursday for 15 days. Jaafar Shtayyeh, member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, joined a protest for the release of Abu Zeid in Nablus, urging the PA to stop the political arrests of journalists.
At the protest in Ramallah, al-Qeeq urged protest and action to confront Israeli campaigns against Palestinians, in particular journalists. Approximately 19 Palestinian journalists are imprisoned by Israel, many without charge or trial, including Omar Nazzal, member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate General Secretariat, and Samah Dweik, accused of “incitement” for postings on Facebook.
Protesters linked the detention of Abu Zeid and other Palestinians by the PA with its ongoing security coordination with Israel; PA security forces share intelligence and information with Israeli occupation forces, and have publicly boasted of undermining and stopping Palestinian resistance. The PA’s security coordination practice has been praised by the Shin Bet.
Five Palestinian journalists’ associations in Gaza condemned the arrest of Abu Zeid and called for his freedom, saying that “we condemn and deplore all forms of political detention against journalists by the security services, especially at a time when 20 journalists are still imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.”
UPDATE: Fouad Assi has suspended his hunger strike on Thursday, 26 May, after concluding an agreement with Israeli occupation forces. His detention will be extended for four months and then ended; it will not be renewed and he will be permitted family visits. Adib Mafarjah is continuing his hunger strike; he will have a court date on 1 June.
Adib Mafarjah from Beit Liqya near Ramallah, remain on hunger strike for the 53rd day, held shacked to his bed in Barzilai hospital. He is imprisoned by the Israeli military without charge or trial under administrative detention and has been on hunger strike since 3 April in protest of his imprisonment and demanding an end to administrative detention.
Ayat Mafarjah, Adib’s wife, told Asra Media Center that the Israeli occupation authorities prohibited Assi’s wife from visiting him in the hospital, and said that Adib’s health was facing a severe decline with difficulty speaking and moving and great weakness. Mafarjah has been imprisoned since 10 December 2014 and his detention renewed repeatedly without charge or trial.
He launched his hunger strike with fellow administrative detainee Fouad Assi, also from Beit Liqya. Assi ended his strike mid-day on Thursday, 26 May.
Mafarjah and Assi are not the only hunger strikers – severely injured prisoner Mansour Moqtada has been maintaining a liquid-only diet in protest of his medical mistreatment.
Montasser Eid, also held in administrative detention without charge or trial since 20 October 2015, launched a hunger strike on 18 May in protest of the renewal of his imprisonment without charge or trial.
Emad Abu Rezeq has also been engaged in a hunger strike for 12 days protesting his imprisonment and interrogation.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network will protest in New York City on Friday, 27 May at 4 PM outside the offices of G4S, the corporation that provides security systems and control rooms to Israeli prisons, at 19 W. 44th St. in Manhattan, demanding freedom for the hunger strikers.
Palestinian hunger striker Sami Janazrah ended his hunger strike – and may be released next Monday, reported Ma’an News. Janazreh has been imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention since 15 November 2015. He launched a hunger strike on 3 March 2016, demanding his freedom and an end to the Israeli policy of administrative detention. Approximately 750 Palestinians – of around 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails – are held under administrative detention without charge or trial.
Janazrah, 43, struck for 70 days before suspending his strike for one week after an Israeli Supreme Court hearing in which the military prosecution stated they would re-investigate Janazrah’s case. He resumed his strike one week later when he remained held under administrative detention, only to end the strike again when the military prosecution announced he would be charged with “incitement” for posting on social media.
Over 150 Palestinians have been arrested by the Israeli occupation over social media posts, mostly on Facebook. However, Palestinian lawyer Jawad Boulos reported that on Monday, 23 May, the charges were rejected by the Ofer military court and that Janazrah would be released the following Monday, 30 May.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network celebrates the accomplishment and achievement of Sami Janazrah, through steadfastness, resistance and struggle, in a great line of Palestinian prisoners who are confronting occupation, racism and injustice on a daily basis inside Israeli prisons. We urge all to remain vigilant on Janazrah’s case until he is released, and to continue to organize and build international solidarity until administrative detention is abolished and all Palestinian prisoners are freed.
Joe Catron, Samidoun New York organizer and writer, was interviewed on Press TV on Tuesday, 24 May about settler impunity and the role of Israeli criminal courts
Catron denounced the “overwhelming impunity for Zionist crimes against Palestinians…Meanwhile, Israeli military courts in the West Bank have an overwhelming conviction rate of 99.74 percent…additionally 700 Palestinians are held without charge or trial at all.”
He placed the impunity of Zionist settlers in the context of state massacres committed by the Israeli military, highlighting the attack on Gaza in 2014 and the Nakba and massacres and dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1947-1948. Catron highlighted Zionist settler crimes as “reflections, in many case, minor ones, of the overall orientation of the colonial settler state-building project of which they are a part.”
He highlighted the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, particularly the campaign to boycott G4S – and G4S’ own commitment to get out of Palestine after growing contract losses due to international outrage at its role in providing equipment and security systems to Israeli prisons.
On Thursday, 26 May, prison contractor and massive global security corporation G4S will convene its Annual General Meeting of shareholders in London. The British-Danish corporation has been hit by the rising international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, highlighting its role in profiting from Israeli imprisonment, occupation and siege of Palestinians, as well as in the imprisonment of youth and migrants in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere.
G4S’ profiting from oppression is also a point of commonality of movements struggling for social justice nationally and internationally. Black4Palestine noted that “G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia.” Divestments from G4S at major US universities have been led by Black student movements and collective prison divestment movements.
In Palestine, G4S not only provides security systems, equipment and control rooms to Israeli prisons and interrogation centers, including prisons where children are held and interrogation centers where Palestinians are routinely subject to torture; the corporation also provides such equipment to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, police training centers, and even the Erez/Beit Hanoun crossing with Gaza, where Israel enforces its siege of nearly two million Palestinians.
In response to the growing pressure and loss of contracts as G4S’ involvement in the incarceration of youth, migrants and oppressed peoples becomes well-known and campaigns have grown around the world to demand an end to the corporation’s investment in apartheid and repression, the company has pledged to sell off its youth incarceration businesses and its entire G4S Israel subsidiary. However, it has made empty promises in the past of not renewing contracts – yet G4S equipment continues to power the incarceration of Palestinians. Palestinian leaders and activists have emphasized the critical importance of continuing to pressure G4S until the corporation is out of the business of apartheid and oppression profiteering – not merely making promises while Palestinian prisoners continue to suffer behind bars of prisons equipped by G4S.
Protesters in London, Manchester and elsewhere are gathering today as part of the Stop G4S Coalition and related efforts, demanding that G4S get out of occupied Palestine and out of the business of imprisonment of youth, migrants, and people generally. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network protests weekly in New York City against G4S and will protest on Friday, 27 May outside the corporation’s New York office.
As G4S’ AGM convenes in London, Samidoun expresses its support, participation and solidarity with all protests against the British-Danish corporation, and call for escalating and intensifying the boycott of G4S. We urge those present in the meeting to demand G4S’ accountability not only to its own promises and commitments to get out of Palestine. but to international human rights, to the Palestinian people and the international movement for justice.
The latest statement by G4S regarding its relationship with the Israeli prison service, police and military shows that it is still not taking adequate steps to address its involvement in Israeli human rights violations, Palestinian civil society campaigners say.
Leaders of some of the biggest UK trade unions wrote to G4S recently to seek clarification regarding its intention to sell its Israeli subsidiary, an announcement that follows a high profile Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the company. The Financial Times reported at the time that G4S was “extracting itself from reputationally damaging work.”
The UK trade unions’ letter expressed concerns that “the announcement of a sale of G4S Israel may be used to justify ongoing complicity in human rights violations” and asked for specific assurances.
The statement that G4S provided in response to the letter simply repeats its previous ambiguous announcements and falls far short from providing the sought explanations.
Ahead of the company’s shareholders meeting in London tomorrow, Mahmoud Nawajaa, general coordinator with the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broadest coalition in Palestinian civil society that leads the global BDS movement, said:
“G4S is refusing to provide any assurances that it will not sign new contracts with Israeli government bodies that commit human rights violations such as the Israeli occupation forces or the Israeli Prison Service.”
“Given its shameful track record of saying one thing and then doing another, G4S statements that it will end its participation in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians at some undetermined point in the future cannot be trusted. Promises about future conduct do nothing to change the reality that G4S continues to aid and abet Israeli violations of international law and Palestinian human rights on a daily basis.”
A pledgeG4S made in 2012 to end its involvement in Ofer prison and Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank by the end of 2015 never materialised.
Nawajaa added: “G4S was offered the chance to express regret for its role in Israel’s prisons, where Palestinian political prisoners are tortured, and the opportunity to assure the public that it will stop facilitating Israel’s crimes as soon as possible. Instead, the company has is trying to hide behind vague promises and the concept of ‘commercial sensitivity’ in order to shield itself from criticism.”
“G4S’s attempt to argue that its intended withdrawal from Israeli projects that violate international law is based on ‘entirely commercial reasons’ does not mean that BDS was not a key factor. G4S has lost contracts worth millions of dollars as a result of BDS campaigns.”
“As was the case at the height of the international boycott of apartheid South Africa, BDS pressure is making some of the world’s largest corporations realize that profiting from Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is becoming commercially untenable.”
According to Addameer, are now more than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, many of which G4S helps to run. This figure includes 430 children and 750 people held in administrative detention, a form of detention without trial.
In addition to its involvement in maintaining Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies through providing services to Israeli settlements, prisons and military checkpoints,G4S is involved in the mass incarceration business and asylum seekers’ detention centers in many countries across the world. As a result, it has become a common target across different movements in the US, UK, South Africa and elsewhere.
G4S has lost contracts with businesses, universities and unions across the world as a result of BDS campaigning. The Bill Gates Foundation and the United Methodist Church pension fund have sold their respective shares in the company following major BDS campaigns in 2014.
The Stop G4S campaign was launched by Palestinian prisoner rights organisations in 2012 and is now taking place in countries across the world, including in Europe, the US, Latin America and the Arab World.
A coalition of US groups recently launched the g4sfacts.org website that explains the company’s role in human rights abuses across the world.
More background about the campaign against G4S is available here and here.
This event is part of a set of protests taking place on 26 May in London outside the Annual General Meeting of G4S. See more also about the protest of the Stop G4S Coalition. G4S protests will also be taking place in Manchester and on Friday in New York.
26TH MAY 2016 – PROTEST G4S AGM – END COMPLICITY IN ISRAEL’S TORTURE OF CHILDREN
On Thursday 26th May 2016 we will be protesting outside the AGM of British security contractor G4S for its complicity in Israel’s crimes against Palestinian prisoners. Please join us.
The British security firm G4S is the worlds largest private security contractor. It has been contracted by the Israeli prison service to secure many of its prisons and interrogation centres where Palestinian political prisoners including women and children and caged and tortured. Figures for August 2015 show that 61% of all Palestinian political prisoners are caged in G4S secured prisons, this includes 100% of all the children Israel is caging and torturing.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s damming report on Israel from 4 July 2013 states that “an average of two [Palestinian] children per day” are “arrested, interrogated and detained” by the Israeli army, that the children are “systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture.. physical and verbal violence, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water. These crimes are perpetrated from the time of arrest, during transfer and interrogation, to obtain a confession but also on an arbitrary basis as testified by several Israeli soldiers as well as during pretrial detention.. Many Palestinian child detainees are transferred out of the OPT and serve their detention and sentences inside Israel in breach of article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
A legal study conducted by the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Resource Centre found that G4S has “failed to demonstrate a genuine commitment to comply with international law in good faith” and is complicit in several of Israel’s violations of international law. Similarly a 2012 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 criticises G4S for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.
40% of the 600 children that were taken from Jerusalem alone, were sexually abused by Israeli soldiers during arrest or interrogation. During interrogation 75% of Palestinian children detained by Israel are physically tortured.
G4S provides the security systems which keep these torture dens operational. Prisoners who have survived these hell holes recall seeing G4S logos on the cameras that witnessed their abuse.
Inminds chair Abbas Ali said “G4S is a British company, as UK citizens we have a direct responsibility for the crimes G4S commits in Palestine. We at Inminds have campaigned against G4S for 4 years with regular protests outside their UK headquarters. In 2013 they promised to quit operations in the West Bank, in particular contacts with Ofer Prison. They broke their promise and this did not happen. In 2014 they promised to end all their contracts with the Israeli Prison Service – this also has not happened. Now this year G4S has announced it is exiting Israel altogether – ditching all its contracts with the apartheid state.. We are not holding our breath, we will be protesting at the AGM demanding actual action on the ground, not empty promises. Our campaign continues until victory.”
Many groups will be joining us on the day as part of the wider StopG4S coalition which focuses on all of G4S’s criminal activity across the globe.
LIVE UPDATES DURING PROTEST
We will, inshAllah, be tweeting live from the protest with live photos being uploaded to our twitter and facebook page. So if you can’t join us on the day, please help us by sharing the photos as they get uploaded.
The Palestinian Prisoners Campaign aims to raise awareness for the plight of Palestinian prisoners and build solidarity for their struggle and work towards their freedom. The campaign was launched by Innovative Minds (inminds.com) and the Islamic Human Rights Commission (ihrc.org) on the occasion of Al Quds Day 2012 (on 17th August 2012), since then we have held actions every fortnight in support of Palestinian prisoners, if you can spare two hours twice a month then please join the campaign by coming to the next action.
Thursday 26th May is the AGM of G4S. We want to send a message from Manchester to the AGM.
G4S get out of Israel Now!!!
Please come to the protest outside 1Portland Street Piccadilly Manchester centre
25 May not only marks the anniversary of the liberation of South Lebanon from 22 years of Israeli occupation and oppression by the Lebanese Resistance, but also the liberation of Lebanese political prisoners from the infamous Khiam prison. On 23 May 2000, 144 Lebanese prisoners were liberated from Khiam, 2 days before the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces.
3,000 Lebanese stormed Khiam, the site of infamous torture of Lebanese resisters, breaking the locks with axes and crowbars. “Set up by the Israelis in 1985 on a hill in the village of Khiam in the South Lebanon Governorate, the Khiam prison was considered to be one of the most ruthless detention and interrogation centers in the Middle East. While the Israelis governed the prison, which included 67 cells and more than 20 solitary confinement cells, they used the South Lebanon Army (SLA), an Israeli proxy militia made up of Lebanese nationals, to execute their orders,” wrote Rana Harbi in Al-Akhbar.
Over 5,000 Lebanese, including 500 women, were imprisoned in Khiam prison over the years. Lebanese who participated in all forms of resistance to the occupation and its proxy forces were tortured brutally inside the notorious prison. The prison after its liberation became a museum and symbol of the torture of the occupiers and the victory of the Lebanese people and their resistance, of their freedom obtained through struggle and years of resistance.
In 2006, when Israel attacked Lebanon, it bombed the Khiam site, leaving a pile of rubble at the site of the prison, as if attempting to destroy the memory of its torture, brutality – and its defeat – preserved by the Lebanese people. However, the memory and commitment to resistance of the former prisoners – many of whom continue to struggle and play leading roles in Lebanese movements and parties, including Hezbollah and the Lebanese Communist Party – and of the people, cannot be erased by the bombing of the prison site, just as they could not be erased by torture, solitary confinement, and years of imprisonment.
The liberation of Khiam prison was not merely symbolic; it was central to the liberation of South Lebanon, just as the liberation of Palestinian prisoners is central to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. The Lebanese people and Resistance continue to struggle against Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms; and the Palestinian people and their Resistance continue to struggle for the liberation of Palestine – its land, its people and its prisoners after over 68 years of occupation. The victory in South Lebanon and the liberation of Khiam remains an anniversary of liberation and a promise for future victories over torture, oppression and occupation.
The following testimonies of former prisoners held in Khiam prison were collected and published in Al-Akhbar by Rana Harbi in 2014:
Degol Abou Tass
In 1976, at the age of 16, I was arrested in a village in occupied Palestine for the first time. I told the Israelis that I trespassed by mistake. They knew I was lying but released me anyway. My parents packed my bags and forced me to leave the country. I found out later that I was the first Lebanese citizen to get arrested by the Israeli forces.
I came back to Rmeish [a village on the borders in South Lebanon] in the 1980s after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The civil war was still raging in Beirut but in the south different resistance movements, such as the Lebanese Communist Party, the Amal Movement, Syrian Social Nationalist Party and many other factions, united against the Israelis. A few months after my arrival, the SLA knocked on my parents door. I had to leave the country, again.
I was miserable. I couldn’t stay away for long. In the early 1990s I came back to Rmeish. All the armed groups were long gone. Hezbollah dominated the resistance scene. I tried to reconnect with old militia leaders but in vain.
One day, an old childhood friend pulled into my driveway. “Are you willing to fight with us?” he asked. I looked uncertain. “Us … Hezbollah,” he added. I climbed into his car and we drove away. In 1998, one of my neighbors ratted me out.
“A Christian with Hezbollah? Now thats something,” the Israeli officer interrogating me said. “How much are they paying you? We will pay double, no triple. What is your price? We can work something out,” he continued. I remained silent. “Okay then Jesus, welcome to Khiam prison.”
We were caged and treated like animals. Believe me, it wasn’t so much about the pain, but the humiliation.
On the morning of May 23, 2000, the guards were talking and walking outside, as usual. Suddenly, complete silence. You could hear a pin drop. We heard the daily UN airplane fly by so we knew it was 9:30 am. “Where did they go?” one prisoner asked. We had no idea.
“They are moving us to occupied Palestine,” yelled a prisoner in a cell right next to ours. I put my feet on the shoulders of two of my cellmates so that I can reach the small window right under the ceiling. “All of us?” I asked. “They will execute half and take half … this is what we heard,” replied another prisoner. Before I could even reply I heard a noise coming from a distance. I couldn’t see anything. The voices grew louder and louder.
“Looks like our parents are clashing with the SLA guards as usual,” one prisoner said. “I bet my mother is still trying to bring me food,” another exclaimed. And then we heard gunshots. People were screaming. More gunshots.
“They are shooting our parents!” said one frightened detainee. “No, the mass execution began. They will execute half of us remember!” replied another. Panic attacks. Anxiety. Fear.
I put my ear against the door. I heard ululations. I heard prayers. I heard women. I heard children. Suddenly, the door opening through which food was usually served broke wide open. “You are liberated, you are liberated!” I fell on my knees. I thought I was hallucinating. I put my fist out. Two men grabbed my fist. “Allah akbar, Allah akbar (God is the greatest) … you are liberated!” My cellmates were all kneeling on the floor in disbelief. The locks were getting smashed from the outside. I cried aloud and the door broke wide open. I don’t really remember what happened next.
I was the first prisoner to get caught on camera. My parents watched the liberation of Khiam on TV because Rmeish was still under occupation at the time. They didn’t recognize me though. My hair and beard were too long and well, I was screaming “Allah akbar!”
Fourteen years later, I’m living with my wife and children in Rmeish, and every morning I drink my coffee while looking over occupied Palestine.
Adnan al-Amin
In November 1990 I was picking up photos from a store in Marjeyoun, a city in south Lebanon, when I got arrested. I was 19 at the time.
They put a tight black cover over my head and made me strip naked. Suspended from my bound wrists from a metal pole, hot and cold water was thrown on me consecutively … hot cold hot cold until I was completely soaked. Then they attached electrodes to my chest and other particularly sensitive areas of my body and electrocuted me, repeatedly.
In the 70 day interrogation period, I was tortured three times per day. I used to lose consciousness and wake up to find myself stumbling blindly in a pitch-black, 1m by 80cm by 80cm solitary confinement room.
We were tied to window grills naked for days in painful positions, freezing water thrown at us in the cold winter nights. We were whipped, beaten, kicked in the head and the jaw, burned, electrocuted, had ear-shattering whistling in our ears, and deprived of food and sleep …it was hard, very hard.
I endured the pain. With time, I became numb. I survived it all without saying a word. I was winning, I thought.
One morning, they dragged me into the interrogation room. “You didn’t tell me your sister was this beautiful,” one of the SLA officers said. My whole world came crashing down. “Wait until you see his mother,” said another. Handcuffed, I threw myself on him from across the table. It costed me 14 hours in the “chicken cage,” a 90-cubic-centimeter enclosure used for extra-severe punishment.
The SLA used to bring in the wives, sisters and daughters of the prisoners and treat them in a vulgar manner like taking off their head scarves, groping them and threatening to rape them. For me, the mere thought was intolerable. “Your sister will pay you a visit tomorrow. You miss her don’t you?”
“I’m a Hezbollah fighter,” I confessed.
Up to 12 prisoners were crammed in a tiny room. We were buried alive. The cells were like coffins. Light and air hardly penetrated through the small, barred windows located near the ceiling. We could barely breathe. We used to relieve ourselves in a black bucket placed in the corner. The heavy odor of human sweat and wastes was intolerable. We showered every three or four weeks. Once a month, we were allowed into the “sun or light room” for 20 minutes only.
One night in 1991 I woke up to the deafening screams of a detainee being tortured in the yard. The louder he screamed, the harder he got whipped. His cries were unbearable, beyond anything I had ever heard before. “You are killing him, you animals,” one of my fellow cellmates shouted.
We started banging on the door of the cell, kicking it with our feet, yelling and asking them to stop. Other prisoners in other cells joined us, but the lashes kept falling and the cries continued. And then … silence. Youssef Ali Saad, father of eight, died under torture on that cold January night. One month later, Asaad Nemr Bazzi died because of medical neglect.
Do you know what the worst part was? Fellow Lebanese citizens did this to us. I almost died on the hands of a man named Hussein Faaour, my neighbor in Khiam. Abu Berhan, another torturer I remember was from Aitaroun. The SLA members were all Lebanese, mostly from the south. Family members, neighbors, childhood friends, classmates, teachers … Lebanese who decided to sell their land and people for cash.
Lebanese who are now living among us like nothing happened, as if they did nothing! It breaks my heart that our former tormentors have escaped punishment so easily.
Fourteen years later, I’m still waiting for justice.
Nazha Sharafeddine
In 1988, I was in Beirut purchasing medicine for my pharmacy in al-Taybeh (a village in South Lebanon) when the SLA forces, aware of my role in transferring arms to Hezbollah fighters, first came looking for me. They stormed into our house again a week later but my mother told them I was in Bint Jbeil. It was the truth but they didn’t believe her.
I remember opening the front gate that afternoon and seeing my mother waiting, weeping and trembling on the doorstep. “They took away your sister and your sister-in-law along with Hadi (her five-month-old baby.) My daughter, my grandson!” she cried. I put on my clothes and waited for the SLA on the front porch. My sister was 20-years-old at the time and I was 26. My mother begged me to run away, but I didn’t.
My mother collapsed on the ground next to the SLA vehicle. I sat in the backseat and they took me away.
Blindfolded I was shoved into the interrogation room. Boiling water was thrown on my face, and my fingers and ears were electrocuted. I didn’t say a word. This went on for a month.
“I heard Hadi is sick,” one of the Israeli officers told me one morning. He wasn’t lying. My sister in law got infected and breastfeeding her child was not an option anymore. Psychologically, I suffered greatly. I wished they would just beat me up instead. I struggled, but I remained silent. Two months later Hadi and his mother, along with my sister, got released. They were of no use to the Israelis anymore.
Women detainees, like men, were severely tortured. You see, gender equality is not always a good thing [she laughs]. Let me tell you how the torture stopped.
After spending 15 days in solitary confinement, I found out upon my return to the cell I shared with six other women that one of my fellow prisoners had an extremely disgusting skin rash. I examined her and as a pharmacist I knew that her rash was contagious. As planned, I got infected. Soon, my skin started changing and I looked like an acid attack victim.
Clearly disgusted by my deteriorating skin, the SLA guard dragged me by my hair into yet another torture session. The torturer, a woman, was waiting for me. With my hair still trapped between the guards fingers, he forced me down to my knees. Before the torturer’s fist reached my jaw, I told her that my skin condition was contagious. The guard instantly let go of my hair and they both took a step back. I tried to keep a straight face but I couldn’t hide my smile. Nobody laid a hand on me after that day.
Fourteen years later, I made peace with the past. My three years in Khiam were tough, but now I feel blessed. I really do.
Palestinian prisoner Malik Qadi, 19, from Bethlehem, announced an open hunger strike on Thursday, 26 May, in protest of his arrest by occupation forces and his torture under interrogation.
