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Israel’s Al Jalame prison: ‘Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks’

Israeli soldiers lead arr 007
Israeli soldiers with arrested Palestinian youths. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

The Guardian published a scathing article over the weekend by Harriet Sherwood on human rights abuses suffered by Palestinian children in Al Jalame prison in northern Israel.

The report is a culmination of interviews conducted by the Guardian including  descriptions of sworn testimonies of minors collected by Defence for Children International (DCI), a human rights organization that has collected hundreds of testimonies from Palestinian children since 2008. The Guardian also viewed rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys from the village of Nabi Saleh. Their report is corroborated by B’Tselem’s study No Minor Matter, published last July. It’s a must read.

The Guardian:

During interrogation, he was shackled. “They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn’t confess,” he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. “They accused me of many things,” he said, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was “now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested.” She said he had become withdrawn.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

“I would start repeating the interrogators’ questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of,” he told the Guardian. “You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress.”

His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. “If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.

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At Israeli prisons, Palestinian children are also shackled by the legs, handcuffed by the wrists and then the handcuffs and shackles are connected rendering the child immobile. In American parlance it is known as being hogtied.

Other ‘techniques’ include sleep deprivation, repeated slaps to the face and head, and head-shaking, which sometimes results in death.

Arrested for being the Palestinian.

The Israeli ‘Justice’ system at work, as much of a sham as the Apartheid Wall (annexing Palestinian land under the guise of security).

Monsters.

More from the Guardian piece:

“Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: “We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people.”

Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. “In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It’s difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment.”

Horton said a guilty plea was “the quickest way to get out of the system”. If the children say their confession was coerced, “that provides them with a legal defence – but because they’re denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty”.”

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And the Zionists proclaim their religion as the legitimate authority for their state. How on earth can they expect us not to become Judeophobes?

I think zionists want us to become judeophobes. Thats the point of sentencing a 13 year old to nine months.

Are they as harsh on setlers? No