Call for int’l probe into Israel’s crimes against Palestinian prisoners

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor yesterday called on the UN to send an international mission to investigate “the grave crimes and violations that Palestinian prisoners and detainees endure in Israeli prisons and detention facilities”.

In a statement released yesterday, the rights group said: “Since the October 2023 start of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the number of crimes involving premeditated killing, killing under torture, torture, ill-treatment, and enforced disappearances of Palestinian prisoners and detainees—particularly those from the Strip—has increased at an unprecedented rate in the prisons and detention facilities operated by the Israeli army and prison administration authorities.”

The organisation noted that it had recently confirmed the death of three detainees from Gaza, bringing the total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees killed in Israeli prisons and detention centres since 7 October 2023 to 54, including 35 detainees from the Gaza Strip.

It stressed that, “given the systematic and pervasive nature of these crimes and the complete immunity enjoyed by their perpetrators, whether at the judicial, political, military, or social levels in Israel, crimes committed in Israeli prisons and detention facilities cannot be seen as isolated behaviours committed by individual “bad apples.””

Adding that many released prisoners “suffered physical and psychological injuries with irreversible effects”, with many “now disabled as a result”.

International silence in the face of such violations, Euro-Med Monitor said, “has given Israel the go-ahead to continue committing these crimes and even intensify them.”

Warning that Israel’s actions constitute full-fledged war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

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