The international Commission Hashd It calls on the international community to protect prisoners in occupation prisons and ensure that the perpetrators of the crime of torture are not unpunished

 Date:26.June.2024

Press Release 

The international Commission” Hashd” It calls on the international community to protect prisoners in occupation prisons and ensure that the perpetrators of the crime of torture are not unpunished.

Today, Wednesday, June 26, 2024, coincides as occasion of International Day against Torture and Supporting Victims, where the United Nations General Assembly, on December 12, 1997, approved the twenty-sixth of the month of each year as an international day against torture, support and rehabilitation of its victims, so the international community, organizations and institutions active in the field of human rights in the world commemorates this day as a day to activate the United Nations Convention against Torture, which entered into force on June 26, 1987.

On this occasion, the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (Hashd) greets to all prisoners in the prisons of Israeli occupation and victims of torture crimes in Palestine and the world. It recalls that the international family has adhered to the rejection and combatting torture and ill-treatment, and after it adopted Article V of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which states “No one shall be subjected to torture, cruel, cruel, brutal or degrading treatment.” This text was followed by adoption by international community of international instruments and conventions that prevent the crime of torture. On December 10, 1984, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention against Torture and Other Treatment Or cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, which obliges States parties to take specific steps to prevent and investigate torture.

Another important development in the field of criminalization of torture is the adoption of the Rome Statute of the Permanent International Criminal Court, which provides for the conduct of international criminal prosecutions of persons accused of acts constituting war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, including torture.

Successive developments in criminalizing the crime of torture indicate the existence of international consensus and an international system that ensures that everyone is not subjected to torture or ill-treatment and guarantees victims of torture their right to demand that the perpetrators of torture crimes be held accountable against them, in addition to consolidating a set of important principles to protect victims of torture, the most important of which is that torture is a crime that does not fall within the time limits.

The International Commission (Hashd) confirmed that Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers were subjected to torture in several forms, psychological and physical, which led to the martyrdom of 257 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, whether as a result of direct torture in prisons, including 37 prisoners since the seventh of October, and also led to the cause of permanent impairments and chronic diseases for thousands of others. All those arrested were subjected to degrading treatment and humane through beatings, abuse, insults, handcuffing, blindfolding, ghost, and deprivation of sleep, food and drink.

The information and documented testimonies also confirm that there are thousands of former detainees, especially those who were subjected to severe torture or who spent many years in detention, still suffer from various and chronic diseases inherited from the occupation prisons and the torture inside, and hundreds of them were martyred as a result years after their liberation.

Since the beginning of Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip until now, Israeli occupation forces have arrested about 9,300 detainees in West Bank and about 12,000 detainees in Gaza Strip, of whom about 6,000 detainees remained, Israeli Prisons Administration deliberately does not publish any details indicating the conditions and places of their detention in Amman to commit the crime of the enforced disappearance of Gaza Strip.

Occupation government has also begun to enact a series of laws that targeted prisoners to base them, and their families and money have affected them, issued a set of military orders and made amendments to previous laws, including the illegal fighter law for prisoners of Gaza Strip, extending the period of issuing the arrest warrant from 72 hours to 6 days, and making the judicial review of administrative detention orders that have been extended from 8 days to 12 days. This shows the arbitrariness in the detention of Palestinian prisoners, for long periods without trial or charge and allows the leader of the region a longer period to issue arrest warrants to a larger number of prisoners, and these long periods give an opportunity to manage prisons to abuse prisoners and prevent them from enjoying their minimum rights.

According to what was shown through Hebrew media, occupation authorities are also holding thousands of detainees in the “Sdeh Taiman” camp near Beer Sheva in occupied interior and the “Anatout” camp near the occupied city of Jerusalem, in which a number of women and children and dozens of male detainees are detained. It is worth mentioning that these camps belong to the occupation army and are not suitable for the detention of detainees. In this context, the Minister of National Security (Ben Ghafir) had visited one of the detention centers in which detainees from Gaza Strip are detained and instructed the prison administration to transfer them to the “Rift’s cell section “Ramla” prison, which is one of the worst and oldest prisons, saying that they do not deserve To see the sun, and the prison administration had published at the end of the year that it is holding 661 detainees from Gaza Strip as an illegal fighter, knowing that this figure does not include all detainees who were arrested from the Strip.

According to the meagre information received by the international organization through the testimonies of prisoners who were released, the detainees in Gaza live in the harshest conditions inside the occupation prisons, where the occupation stripped them of their clothes, and their hands are hunched at all the time, tortured and abused permanently, and the release of police dogs to Sparke the bodies of some of them. It is noteworthy that the number of 37 detainees were martyred as a result of torture and medical neglect, the latest of which are doctors Adnan Al-Barsha and Iyad Al-Rantsi.

During the ongoing war of genocide and Israeli aggression, the International Commission received several testimonies about Israeli army killing dozens of Palestinian detainees and carrying out extrajudicial and judicial executions, especially while they were in the Gaza Strip.

The most egregious testimonies from the released detainees were about torture in the “Sdeh Timan” camp, which is run by Israeli army and is located between the cities of Beersheba and Gaza in the south, and where the majority of detainees from Gaza Strip are detained, which has turned into a new “Guantanamo” prison in which the dignity of the detainees is practiced and the most severe forms of torture and abuse are practiced against them in light of being deprived of food and treatment.

The International Commission  (Hashd) renews its condemnation of the crimes of torture in the prisons of Israeli occupation, which is another aspect of the continuous genocide against Palestinians, calling for urgent international action to ensure that international organizations and lawyers are allowed to visit the families of Gaza Strip, reveal their fate, ensure that all measures are taken to enjoy their rights contained in the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, and open an investigation into the crimes of the Israeli occupation against the prisoners and detainees in the prisons of Israeli occupation.

Expressing Ali’s condemnation also for the continuation of arbitrary arrest and the practice of torture in prisons and detention centers and detention in Palestine, which led to the death of a number of inmates and the two situations during the previous years, without punishing the perpetrators of this crime and without achieving justice and fairness for the victims of torture, it emphasizes that the overthrow of impunity for the perpetrators of the crime of torture means stopping the forms of protection and punishing them, and affirming that torture is a crime that it is not a statute of limitations, and that the day will come when justice will prevail for all those who were tortured for the value and dignity of the human being, and believing that the punitive measures and the use of the weapon of starvation against Palestinians in Gaza Strip Committing the crime of torture, condemning the continued inability of the international community to stop the crimes of genocide, aggression, torture, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, it demands the following: –

1.​ International Commission (Hashd): The international community, United Nations and High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment call on the need to intervene and pressure the occupying state to stop the ongoing crime of genocide and the crime of torture against Palestinian and Arab detainees in the prisons of the occupation state, and to work to provide international protection for families in the occupation prisons and to ensure that the issue of soldiers and occupation leaders to commit crimes of torture.

2.​ International Commission (Hashd): Calls on Palestinian government agencies to release the detainees arbitrarily and work hard to prevent the practice of torture and prohibit it, and to hold all those who practiced against detainees and prisoners accountable by bringing them to justice, ensuring fairness for victims, and activating all national measures to combat torture.

3.​ International Commission (Hashd): Calls on international community to exert more efforts to ensure the international investigation into Israeli occupation of prisoners and detainees in the occupation prisons and to hold accountable the leaders and soldiers of Israeli occupation that the perpetrators of the crime of torture.

4.​ International Commission (Hashd): calls on the prosecutor of International Criminal Court to act seriously and stop the policies of procrastination and procrastination by annexing and accelerating the procedures for investigating the crimes of torture against the families and detainees in Israeli occupation prison and issuing arrest warrants against all those who committed this crime and incited it from the leaders and soldiers of Israeli occupation.