Data published by the Palestine Center for Prisoners Studies today, Monday, showed that the Israeli occupation forces carried out 122 thousand arrests during the years of the second intifada, whose 20th anniversary this day.
The Center stated in a report on this occasion that among the detainees (2,200) women and girls, and (17,400) children.
Riyadh Al-Ashqar, Director of the Center, pointed out that when the Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out in 2000, there were only 700 prisoners in the occupation prisons, and then the number increased dramatically as a result of the occupation’s adoption of a policy of arrests, especially after the re-occupation of the West Bank in 2002, until the number reached Prisoners were at the highest rate in 2004, to 12 thousand prisoners.
He indicated that the number of prisoners gradually decreased in the following years, until their number reached at present (4,500) prisoners, including (38) female prisoners, (150) children, (8) representatives in the Legislative Council, and 380 administrative prisoners.
Al-Ashqar noted that the occupation has not excluded women from the arrest campaigns since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while in recent years it has escalated its targeting of murder, arrest and summoning, noting that (2200) cases of detention of Palestinian women and girls have been monitored since September 2000, including dozens of minors, and the wounded. The female patients, the elderly, the academics, the wives of martyrs and prisoners.
While the occupation is still detaining (38) female prisoners inside prisons under harsh and tragic conditions, the occupation deprives them of all their legitimate rights and practices against them all forms of insult, torture and harassment against them, including installing cameras in the prison yards and corridors, which is a violation of their privacy and a restriction of their freedom of movement inside the prison .
During the Al-Aqsa Intifada, four female prisoners put their newborns inside prisons, where they were kidnapped while pregnant and placed in less so-called inhumane conditions.
Al-Ashqar stated that with the outbreak of the intifada, there were no children in the occupation´s prisons, and during its years, the occupation kidnapped more than 17,400 children under the age of eighteen, and dozens of them were shot and wounded before arrest and transferred to investigation and prisons in harsh conditions. They were interrogated before providing treatment to them.
He indicated that the number of imprisoned children has now reached (150) children distributed in Ofer Prison, Majdou and Damon, and the various detention and investigation centers, among them a number not exceeding 15 years of age, and the occupation practices against children the worst methods of abuse, depriving them of all their legitimate rights, and pressuring them to work with the intelligence .
Likewise, in recent years, the occupation has escalated the issuance of retaliatory sentences against children that reached life imprisonment, regardless of their age, and dozens of them were arrested after being informed of gunfire on the pretext of their intention to carry out stabbings against soldiers or settlers.
The director of the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies indicated that during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, (102) martyrs had risen to the captive movement, as the number of martyrs of the captive movement rose to 225, as a result of medical negligence, severe torture, or as a result of premeditated murder and physical liquidation after arrest.
Al-Ashqar explained that (40) were killed as a result of deliberate medical negligence, while (3) were martyred due to violent and cruel torture, and another martyr was killed as a result of live and direct gunfire at him during clashes with the administration in the Negev prison. The martyr “Rasim Suleiman Ghunaimat,” from Ramallah, was burned in 2005 after a fire broke out in Megiddo detention center as a result of a short circuit.
Al-Ashqar mentioned that during the years of the intifada, the occupation courts issued more than (30,800) administrative detention decisions, between new decisions and renewals, arbitrarily without clear charges, as the occupation invokes the existence of a secret file for these that no one is allowed to see except the representative of the military prosecution and the judge who issues Administrative order.
And he indicated that during the years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the occupation courts issued more than 500 life sentences against prisoners who were accused of carrying out operations that led to the killing of soldiers or settlers, in addition to dozens of life sentences who were released in the free loyalty deal in 2011, and they were re-arrested and their previous sentences were returned.
