“We call for immediate and urgent intervention to put an end to the crimes committed by the occupation authorities against Palestinian detainees and provide them with the necessary protection,” the organization said in a statement.
The statement reassured solidarity with the prisoners and highlighted their “sacrifices and their heroic struggle to win freedom, for their just cause and for the construction of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Some 4,900 Palestinians are being held in prisons in Israel, including 169 underage and 31 women, four NGOs denounced on Monday in a joint statement on the occasion of the celebration of the Day of the Palestinian Prisoners, noting that about a thousand of them are incarcerated under the policy of administrative detention without charges or trial. They also denounced that 23 inmates have been behind bars before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
They noted that some 400 Palestinians have served prison terms for more than two decades and 554 are currently serving multiple life sentences.
The document was prepared by the Prisoners and Former Prisoners Commission, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association and the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
In 1974 the Palestinian National Council approved the celebration of Prisoner’s Day on the occasion of the release of Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi, who became the first prisoner released by Israeli forces.
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