[ 03/07/2011 – 04:35 PM ]
RAMALLAH, (PIC)– Israel has decided to deport Palestinian prisoner Hammad Muslim Abu Amra to Lebanon thirty months after his prison sentence had ended.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has informed Abu Amra, 48, of Israel’s decision to deport him to live with his family in the Nahar al-Barid refugee camp in Lebanon, the Popular Movement for the Support of Prisoners and Palestinian Rights reported.
Abu Amra was being held prisoner at the Nafha prison after his six-year prison sentence came to an end in February 2009, as Israel considered him a non-Palestinian Arab prisoner and dealt with him using the “Unlawful Combatant law”, the PMSPPR said.
The law allows for holding the prisoner indefinitely without an indictment.
Meanwhile, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said prisoners who have gone on hunger strike today are protesting continued search raids and solitary confinement policies adopted by the Israeli Prison Service.
The latest incident was in Ashkelon prison on 30 June, when special units raided two sections and forced prisoners to succumb to strip searches.
The strike comes amid an organized campaign to impose more sanctions on prisoners in order to pressure Hamas into releasing captured prisoner Gilad Shalit without a prisoner exchange.
The Gaza Prisoners’ Affairs Ministry has said the prisoners would proceed in steps to protest the sanctions until the IPS succumbs to their demands.
For the first time ever prisoners sitting in all of the Israeli prisons will go on hunger strike on Sunday, the ministry’s media director Riyadh al-Ashqar said in a fresh statement.
The warning strike is aimed at pressuring the IPS into stopping its policy of isolating senior prisoners, including Hamas’s Yehya al-Sinwar.
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