RAMALLAH, Wednesday, May 20, 2020 (WAFA) – Israeli Prison Service today transferred a hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner to solitary confinement, said the Palestine Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

PPS said that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) transferred Sami Janazreh, who has been on a hunger strike for ten days against his ongoing administrative detention without charge and abusive treatment,  from the Naqab prison to Ayla prison, and kept him under under solitary confinement.

Janazreh, 47, is the secretary-general of Fatah in al-Fawwar refugee camp in Hebron, and a father of three children, aged 8, 11 and 17.

PPS pointed out that IPS adopts the policy of frequent transfers of Janazreh from one prison to another as a means to force him to end his hunger strike, and held IPS fully responsible for the fate of Janazreh.

Israel’s widely condemned practice of administrative detention that allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

The US State Department has said in past reports on human rights conditions for Palestinians that administrative detainees are not given the “opportunity to refute allegations or address the evidentiary material presented against them in court.”

Amnesty International has described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.

K.F.