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

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Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.

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