RAMALLAH, May 28, 2012 (WAFA) – The Israeli Prison Service punished a prisoner for refusing to wear prison uniform by transferring him to a cell in Shatta prison in central Israel, the Palestinian Prisoner Club (PPC) said Monday.

A spokeswoman for the PPC told WAFA that the Gilboa prison administration transferred Kifah Hattab to Shatta for refusing to wear the prison uniform or stand up for headcount.

She said Hattab, a former pilot and director of the civil defense department in Tulkarm, was transferred to Shatta prison as a punitive measure where he will be kept in a cell, describing his new situation as sort of solitary confinement compared to Gilboa where prisoners share big rooms.

Hattab, arrested in 2003 and sentenced to two life terms, has threatened to go on hunger strike if the Israeli Prison Service fails to treat him as a prisoner of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

He already went on a number of hunger strikes in the last two years demanding the same thing but later called off his hunger strike.

Meanwhile, head of the PPC legal department, Jawad Boulus, said Israel’s recent renewal of administrative detention of several Palestinian detainees, violates its agreement reached with the prisoners on May 14 that ended a month-long hunger strike by almost 2000 prisoners.

The agreement stipulated that Israel would not renew administrative detention, which is holding Palestinians in jail for prolonged periods without charge or trial based on secret evidence and according to laws from the British mandatory period, unless there are clear evidence to incriminate them.

Boulus accused Israel of not honoring this part of the deal by renewing on Sunday administrative detention of six detainees, including four lawmakers, without any clear reason for its decision.

M.H./M.S.