The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) specified in a statement that Anas Ibrahim Shadid, 26; Mahmoud Abdel Halim Talahma, 32; Abdullah Mohammad Abido, 36, and Mohammad Ahmad Dandis, 25, began the protest, although the latter reached an agreement with the prison authorities.
According to the PPS all of them are held in the Ofer prison, located near Ramallah. Shadid has been detained several times before and spent three years behind bars, during which he went on two hunger strikes, while Abido spent five years in prison without charge or trial.
The PSS estimated at 1,083 the number of Palestinians detained under “administrative detention”, including 17 underaged and three women.
The policy is used to arrest Palestinians for renewable intervals that typically range from three to six months on the basis of undisclosed evidence, which even the defendant’s lawyer is prohibited from seeing.
In April, the Israeli NGO B’Tselem (Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) denounced administrative detention as illegal, cruel and in violation of international law.
The decision to put a Palestinian under administrative detention is made by the regional military commander without charge or trial, B’Tselem questioned. “According to the military law applied in the West Bank, a person can be administratively detained for six months, but the order can be extended, so the imprisonment is in practice indefinite and detainees never know when they will be released,” it criticized.
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