Israel prison Gulag denies rights to non-Jewish prisoners
Supreme Court, state have previously determined punitive tactic is illegal; Adalah demands Attorney General take immediate action.
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel is urgently fighting an Israel Prison Service (IPS) practice which is preventing Palestinian prisoners who are participating in a hunger strike from meeting with their lawyers.
[CLICK HERE to read press release on Adalah’s website]
On 17 April 2017, some 1,500 Palestinians held by Israel and classified as “security prisoners” began a hunger strike to protest the conditions of their detention in Israeli prisons and to demand improvements (Israel is currently holding some 6,500 Palestinians in prisons and detention centers).
In response to the hunger strike, as a punitive measure, the IPS is preventing hunger-striking prisoners from meeting with their lawyers. Attorneys who had scheduled authorized visits with their clients were surprised to discover that the IPS has cancelled their meetings for a variety of illegal pretexts relating to the prisoner’s participation in the hunger strike.
Adalah Attorney Muna Haddad sent a letter on 25 April 2017 on behalf of seven attorneys representing Palestinian prisoners to Osnat Mendel, director of the Supreme Court Department in the State Attorney’s Office, demanding immediate intervention to order the IPS to allow Palestinian prisoners participating in the hunger strike to meet with their lawyers.
“It is illegal to prevent meetings between attorneys and prisoners participating in a hunger strike and this act therefore constitutes a forbidden punishment,” Attorney Haddad wrote. “This is a violation of the hunger striking prisoners’ basic constitutional right to meet with their legal representatives and a violation of their constitutional right to dignity.
Families of Palestinian Prisoners protest the continued persecution of their relatives in Israel’s Prison Gulag System and demand their release. Photos (C) 2014 Mohammed Asad. All Rights Reserved. Permission to republish given with full credit to Mohammed Asad and The Arab Daily News.“A prisoner’s or detainee’s right to meet with an attorney for consultations takes on additional importance when he or she is participating in a hunger strike and is exposed to health risks and IPS punitive sanctions.”
Meetings between lawyers and prisoners not participating in the hunger strike have not been affected.
In 2004, Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) submitted a petition to the Supreme Courtdemanding that the IPS halt its practice of preventing attorneys from visiting Palestinian political prisoners and detainees then participating in a hunger strike.
In that case, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the right of prisoners and detainees to meet with their lawyers is guaranteed, including those taking part in a hunger strike. The Supreme Court also decided that the IPS’s barring of such meetings were illegal, at the admission of the state’s own representative.
Given the urgency of the matter, Adalah demands that the attorney general act immediately, within 24 hours, to:
- Cancel the IPS’s practices preventing attorneys from meeting with prisoners on hunger strike;
- Issue an urgent written directive to all IPS personnel clarifying that it is illegal to prevent or delay such meetings.
RELATED PRESS RELEASES:
Adalah to IPS: Illegal to prevent attorneys from visiting Palestinian detainees on hunger strike
Ending Illegal Policy of Limiting Attorneys’ Meetings with Hunger-Striking Prisoners
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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