December 6, 2010

ALGIERS, (PIC)-- Former prisoner and expert on prisoners' affairs Abdulnasser Farwana has said that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) was performing more than 5,000 experimental drug tests on Palestinian prisoners per annum.

Farwana said in a research paper presented at the Algerian conference for support of Palestinian prisoners that the Israeli health ministry was granting permits to medicine companies to perform those tests on 15% of prisoners.

He said that the tests explain the increasing number of prisoners who suffer from various illnesses and the emergence of strange and malignant diseases among the prisoners, which endanger their health.

Most of the Palestinian prisoners face health problems while 1500 of them need urgent medical treatment including tens suffering from serious and chronic diseases, the researcher underscored.

Farwana recalled that the Nazis were the first to experiment drugs on prisoners, pointing to a big similarity between them and the IOA.

He noted that around 3,000 Palestinian prisoners (45% of the total prisoners) in the IOA jails of Nafha, Raymond, and Negev are subjected to biological tests en masse, referring to the presence of the Dimona nuclear reactor and the impact of its poisonous refuse.

The former prisoner stressed the importance of activating the World Health Organization's decision last May that condemned the IOA for ignoring the Palestinian prisoners' medical conditions.

He finally advocated catering for the liberated prisoners and checking them on periodical basis especially when many of them suffer diseases after their release most probably because of the drug tests or the effect of incarceration.