RAMALLAH, August 14, 2018 (WAFA) – Palestinian woman writer Lama Khater, 42 and a mother of five children from the Hebron area in the occupied West Bank, was detained on July 24 during a raid at her home and has since been undergoing rigorous interrogation in Israeli detention that lasts as long as 20 hours a day.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS), Khater was first charged of writing what her Israeli security interrogators claimed were “time bombs.” But then the charges included membership in an illegal organization, assuming a leading positon in it and providing services to this organization. Her writings, however, remained the main focus of the interrogation, said the PPS.

Khater’s daily rigorous and long interrogation continued in an attempt to get her to make confessions, which she refused to do.

A PPS attorney who was able to visit her on Tuesday morning said the interrogators have threatened to arrest other people to force her to confess to the charges, but she would not budge.

Khater told her attorney that she was kept with her hands and legs tied on a chair all the time while in the interrogation room. She leaves the room only when she needs to go the toilet.

Last week, an Israeli military court had remanded the Palestinian writer and mother of five to 12 days to continue interrogation. However, her attorney was able to get the court, after an appeal, to reduce the remand to eight days. Her next court hearing is on Thursday, the sixth in less than a month, according to the PPS.

M.K.