RAMALLAH, April 13, 2016 (WAFA) – The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Wednesday said that a Palestinian detainee in Israeli jails has entered 40 consecutive days of hunger strike against his administrative detention;  without charge or trial.

The commission’s lawyer, Mo’taz Shqerat, said detainee Sami Janazreh suffers from acute pain in the kidneys and throughout his body, and is unable to move or walk, after 40 successive days of hunger strike.

Janazreh refuses to take any nutritional supplements and relies on water only.

The detainee told the lawyer that the prison administration continuously attempts to break his hunger strike through various punitive measures, including confiscating all of his personal belongings.

He said that he will continue his hunger strike until his demand of ending his administrative detention is met.

Janazreh, 43, is an ex-detainee who spent seven years in Israeli jails. He was re-detained in mid November 2015 and placed under administrative detention, noting that this is the second time Israeli authorities places janazreh in jail without charge or trial.

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.

According to Addameer human rights group, “Palestinians have been subjected to administrative detention since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation in 1967 and before that time, under the British Mandate. The frequency of the use of administrative detention has fluctuated throughout Israel’s occupation and has been steadily rising since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights and information center maintained, “Under certain circumstances, this type of detention may be lawful. However, due to the substantial injury to due process inherent in this measure, international law stipulates that it may be exercised only in very exceptional cases – and then only as a last possible resort, when there are no other means available to prevent the danger.”

“Nevertheless, Israeli authorities routinely employ administrative detention.”

Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails often resort to hunger strike to protest their detention without charge or trial.

In February 2016, Palestinian journalist Mohammad Al Qiq ended 94 days of hunger strike which placed him on the verge of death. Al-Qiq was protesting his detention without charge or trial.

T.R.