Saturday 24 January 2009

Four Jihad detainees in Abbas's prisons declare hunger strike

[ 24/01/2009 - 10:08 AM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Four members of the Islamic Jihad Movement went on open-ended hunger strike on Friday evening in the prisons of the PA security apparatuses in the West Bank.

A responsible source in Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the detainees, who have been held in PA security prisoners in the West Bank for periods ranging from three to seven months, were protesting their continued detention.

The source noted that two of them were brothers and that a third was seriously injured in his leg at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces.

He criticized former PA chief Mahmoud Abbas for his repeated calls for resuming national dialog at a time PA security apparatuses loyal to him in the West Bank were still detaining citizens for political affiliation.

Describing such calls as "deceptive", the source held the PA in Ramallah fully responsible for the lives of the four detainees and all other political detainees. He also asked the Palestinian forces and factions to expose those "arbitrary practices".

In another incident of political detention, the so-called preventive security apparatus on Friday detained Esam Barkan, the director of MP Samira Al-Halaika office, after summoning him for interrogation.

Relatives of Barkan said that he was summoned and questioned three times in the past month.

Barkan, who previously served ten years in Israeli occupation jails, was detained by Israeli occupation authority around five months ago and was held in detention for two weeks.

In the meantime, Abbas's security men launched a large-scale arrest campaign in lines of citizens in Al-Khalil city and district over the past couple of days after claiming they were Hamas activists.

Locals in various towns in the district reported the abduction of 16 citizens at the hands of those apparatuses including Barkan.

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