Addameer

Salwa Salah and Sara Siureh were both arrested from their homes in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on 5 June 2008. This is the first time that girls under the age of 18 have been put in administrative detention. On 12 June 2008 they were issued with military administrative detention orders. The orders had been set for four months (Salwa) and five months (Sara). A military court confirmed the orders on 18 June.

Human rights groups based in the occupied Palestinian territories are concerned regarding the intensified Israeli campaign of “targeted assassinations” of Palestinian activists. In an open letter to diplomatic missions they stated that the policy of “targeted assassination” “not only circumvents the fundamental right to due process but also risks the further destabilisation of an already volatile political situation.” With ten Palestinians killed in the last five days the human rights groups call on the international community to demand an end to the illegal Israeli practice and to ensure the respect of international humanitarian law.

On the morning of 4 August 2003, the Israeli Prisons’ Services published on their website a list of names of Palestinian prisoners and detainees expected to be released on Wednesday 6 August 2003. Of the 342 Palestinian prisoners slated for release, 159 are administrative detainees and 183 have been sentenced. Palestinian prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer examines the details.

As the world commemorates International Women’s Day, Addameer remembers the remaining 65 Palestinian female detainees currently being held by Israel in the Neveh Terzah section of Ramleh prison.

‘Abla Sa’adat who was on her way to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was arrested and placed under four months administrative detention. Two other Palestinian women, who are held at Beit El military detention center were also placed under administrative detention.

Addameer is concerned for the well being of Mrs. Abla Sa’adat, who is currently being detained by the Israeli authorities in an isolation cell at the Beit El military detention center, north of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Sa’adat was detained at the Allenby Bridge border crossing to Jordan on her way to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

On this year’s Human Rights Day, over 6000 Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons, detained under arbitrary and unjust military regulations, interrogated through torture, and living in subhuman conditions of detention in the various military detention camps both in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as those located illegally within Israel.