FIVE JORDANIANS HELD IN ISRAEL ON HUNGER STRIKE

Ramallah‪, 27 Rajab 1434/5 June, 2013 (MINA) – Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said Wednesday (5/6) five Jordanian prisoners held in Israel, including two Palestinians holding Jordanian citizenship, are currently on hunger strike demanding their transfer to a Jordanian prison to serve their remaining time.

The Palestinian prisoners who hold Jordanian citizenship are Abdullah Barghouthi, Muhammad Rimawi, Hamza Othman, Alaa Hamad, and Mit’ib Mar’ee, are on hunger strike for the same demands, WAFA News Agency reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

Barghouthi, 41, from the village of Beit Rima near Ramallah arrested in March 2003 and sentenced to 67 life terms, the highest a prisoner has ever received, and Rimawi, 47, from the same village and serving three life terms since his arrest in October 2001, began their hunger strike on May 2.

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Barghouthi told Addameer‪ lawyer that all five prisoners will not stop their hunger strike until their demands are met‪. Human Rights Association said on Wednesday(4/6).

The prisoners are demanding that they be released from Israeli prisons and serve the remaining time in their sentences in Jordanian prisons according to the Wadi Araba agreement between Jordan and Israel and which was previously applied to the case of Sultan Ajouli, who was transferred to Jordanian custody in accordance with the agreement.

They are also demanding that Israel discloses the whereabouts of 20 Jordanian prisoners who have been missing and to turn over to their families bodies of fighters Israel has killed and kept in “numbered graves” in special cemeteries.

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Meanwhile, more than 700 prisoners belonging to the Palestinian security services announced that they will start a series of protest acts including refusal to wear the brown Israeli prison uniform and to refuse to stand for the headcount demanding that the Israeli prison administration recognize them as prisoners of war and transfer them to prisons within the territories occupied in 1967.(T/P04/P03)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)