“Dear colleagues, I ask you to take a few minutes of your time to act in support of Palestinians and against the illegal procedure of administrative detention.” Prof. Imad Barghouthi asks for international support as he waits for an Israeli court to review the military order that put him under administrative detention for four months.
“The repeated arrest of one of Palestine’s most active and prominent scientists is a direct attack to Palestinian’s right to science protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” says 2018 Chemistry Nobel Laureate George Smith. “The violation of the right to science anywhere is an attack to scientists everywhere”.
“It’s a crime that the Israeli military would pull a gentle soul like Ubai [Aboudi] out of his home in front of his family in the middle of the night,” Noam Chomsky said in a joint statement published by Scientists for Palestine. “They are clearly sending a signal to anyone who works with Palestinian civil society.” The group seeks the release of political economist Aboudi, arrested by Israel on November 13 and held in administrative detention.
Ramzy Baroud writes, “Of the dozens of Palestinian and Arab prisoners I interviewed in recent months for a soon-to-be-published volume on the history of the Palestinian prison experience, every single one of them underwent a prolonged process of torture during the initial interrogation, that often extended for months.”
Palestinians are expressing outrage after hunger-striking prisoner Heba al-Labadi, 24, revealed new details surrounding her interrogation by Israeli forces, and numerous torture tactics used on her in order to force her to end her strike. Her case, along with several other young Palestinians arrested in recent weeks, are garnering attention locally and on social media.