RAMALLAH, Saturday, March 21, 2020 (WAFA) – Marking Mother‘s Day, the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) said today that 17 out of the 43 Palestinian political women prisoners in Israeli detention are mothers.

It said the Israeli Prison Service practices several forms of maltreatment against Palestinian mothers in detention, including denial of family visitation for some of them and banning many of them from making phone calls with their children.

It said some of the women prisoners are mothers of infants less than one-year-old and who are serving long sentences, like prisoner Rawan Samhan from Hebron who was arrested despite nursing her 8-month-old baby.

PPS added that the women prisoners undergo heavy interrogation and torture during detention to forcibly extract confessions.

Six mother prisoners are serving prolonged sentences of more than four years, namely Israa Jaabis, serving 11 years; Fadwa Hamada, 10 years, Amani Hashim, 10 years; Jihan Hashima, four years; Helweh Hamamreh, six years, and Nisreen Hasan, six years.

The 43 Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli detention are part of the nearly 5000 Palestinian political prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails for resisting the Israeli occupation of their homeland.

M.N./M.K.