Israeli forces imprisoned 30 teenage Palestinians in August and collected 65,000 shekels ($17,270) from their families as fines, the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs revealed yesterday.
The majority of the detainees reported being beaten and tortured during their detention, interrogation and transport from one detention centre to another, the group said.
Thirteen-year-old were amongst those detained, the committee’s lawyer Luay Akka said in a statement.
Akka added that 17 of the detainees were taken from their homes during military raids, five were detained from off the street, four at military checkpoints, and four arrived voluntarily to detention centres after they received summons from Israeli authorities.
Three of the 30 detainees were held without being charged or standing trial in administrative detention, and the rest were sentenced after court hearings to periods ranging from one month to 45 months.
Mousa Khanafsa, a 14-year-old boy from Abu Dis in the Jerusalem district of the occupied West Bank told Akka that he was violently beaten when he was detained from a street near his house.
A group of undercover Israeli officers, he said, chased him in the street and when they caught him they “assaulted him with the butts of their rifles, stomped on him with military boots, and was left bleeding from his nose.”
According to Addameer, of the 7,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli custody, 250 were minors as of July.