BySCEME
Administrative detention without charge or trial is a violation of Human Rights
Hana Al-Shalabi, a young Palestinian woman (29), was arrested from her home in Burqin village near Jenin on 16 February in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. She had previously spent two and a half years in administrative detention – without charge or trial – from 14 September 2009, until she was released last October in the prisoner exchange that freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
During the arrest, Hana Al-Shalabi and members of her family were beaten by the Israeli military. At the prison, she was submitted to the abusive practice of strip and body searching, a process by which almost all of their clothing is forcibly removed by Israeli soldiers.
On 18 February 2012, she began an open-ended hunger strike to protest against this “illegal, illegitimate and immoral” open-ended incarceration, using her lawyer’s words. Last Sunday, she entered her 34th day of a hunger strike to protest her degrading treatment and the Israeli practice of administrative detention against Palestinians. Hana Shalabi lost 31 pounds, her muscles are wasting and she is in excruciating pain, said Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which has provided her a doctor. She has taken only water since her arrest on Feb. 16.
Currently more than 300 Palestinians are in Israeli administrative detention, including 21 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
This controversial practice allows the Israeli military to hold Palestinians on secret evidence without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Detainees are arrested under the authority of a military order that allows military commanders to detain an individual for up to six months if they have “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention,” said Addameer, a Palestinian organization that deals with Palestinian prisoner support and human rights. “On or just before the expiry date, the detention order is frequently renewed. This process can be continued indefinitely,” it said.
Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have severely condemned this practice and are asking for the release of Hana Shalabi and other Palestinians held in administrative detention immediately, unless they are promptly charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offence and brought to trial in full conformity with international fair trial standards.