Agencies-Gaza post
Palestine calls on international community to hold Israel accountable for detainee’s memory loss
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday called on international communities to hold the Israeli occupation to account for its brutal ill-treatment of a Palestinian inmate that led to his loss of memory, stressing that the violation amounts to an offense against humanity.
The ministry stated in a press release on Monday that the Israeli occupation not only mistreated and abused Mohammad Obeid, a resident of the village of Anza from Jenin in the northern West Bank, in detention until he lost his memory but even left him on the side of a road near a checkpoint in the south of the West Bank without telling his family of his release.
All this occurred despite the fact that occupation officers were aware of Obeid’s health problems, and that he was suffering from amnesia, the report noted.
“This criminal, inhuman and racist behavior reflects what our heroic prisoners have to go through in the occupying regime’s prisons, including executions and poor sanitary conditions, and also summarizes the essence of Israeli policies against the entire Palestinian nation,” the Palestinian foreign ministry stated.
The Palestinian ministry went on to hold the Israeli occupation forces fully and directly accountable for the crime executed against Obeid.
It also called on relevant UN institutions and international bodies, particularly the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to accept their responsibilities, expose the importance of the crime, and hold Israeli officials to account for it.
It said the crime should be brought before specialized national and international tribunals of law to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their criminal actions.
There are reportedly over 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli occupation jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of the so-called “administrative detention”, a policy that allows Israel to hold detainees without charge or trial. Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.
Israeli prison authorities keep Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. According to Palestinian officials, the prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
Human rights institutions say Israel breaks all the rights and freedoms given to inmates under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
