October 18, 2009

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Al-Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies and human rights said Saturday that the Israeli military court in Ofer prison, near the occupied city of Ramallah, decided to defer consideration in the trial of female prisoner Nada Al-Jayyousi for the seventh consecutive time without setting a new date.

The center noted that Jayyousi appeared in Israeli courts many times over the last two years and every time, the Israeli prosecutor refused to release her or to make a deal with her lawyer.

The center added that the prisoner is exposed to severe psychological and physical torture inside Israeli jails and investigation centers, affirming that the Israeli intelligence failed to condemn her, so they tried to extract confessions by force through threatening her with the arrest of her elder daughter Tasneem.

For his part, director of the center Fouad Al-Khafsh said that interrogating prisoner Jayyousi every month in Beit Eil interrogation center is sufficient evidence to condemn Israel for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian lands.

In another related context, the ministry of prisoners’ affairs announced that two Palestinian prisoners joined on Saturday the list of detainees who spent more than 20 years in Israeli jails.

Information director in the ministry Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the list of those prisoners decreased in the past two days to 106 after the release of two Syrian detainees who were kidnapped in 1985, but it rose up again to 108 after new Palestinian prisoners called Magdi Ajuli and Mahmoud Jaradat exceeded their 20th year in prison.

Ashqar pointed out that the list of those prisoners rises almost every year, where there are hundreds of prisoners who have spent long years in prison and are about to join the list.