Ramallah-Ma’an- The Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Prisoners’ Club said that the number of arrests among lawyers since the beginning of the war of extermination has reached no less than 30 lawyers, including two female lawyers.
The Prisoners Authority and the Prisoners Club added, in a joint statement, today, Tuesday, on the occasion of Palestinian Lawyer’s Day, that the occupation carried out systematic crimes against lawyers during their arrests, and they were subjected to all retaliatory measures, as are all detainees in the occupation’s prisons.
They stressed that the occupation has historically targeted lawyers and human rights activists, and this has escalated over the past few years, with the increasing talk about the possibility of prosecuting the occupation in the International Criminal Court, and prosecuting Palestinian human rights and civil institutions.
The Authority and the Club continued that the arrests are one aspect of the restrictions on the work of Palestinian lawyers. Since t
he beginning of the war of extermination, legal teams working in human rights institutions, specifically those who visit and represent detainees, have been subjected to many restrictions on their work, with the aim of undermining their role, as well as with the aim of keeping the Palestinian detainee completely isolated from the world, in addition to the series of restrictions imposed on lawyers working in military courts, which constitute a major shift in the ability to continue performing their work within the occupation’s military courts in order to follow up on the cases of detainees.
In a previous statement by the Authority and the Club, the most prominent restrictions imposed by the occupation on lawyers were reviewed, as the prison administration prevented them from visiting detainees at the beginning of the aggression. After attempts by the relevant institutions, the lawyers were able to resume visits, although a large number of obstacles remained, most notably: the prison administration deliberately
declared a state of emergency upon the lawyer’s arrival at the prison in order to cancel the visit after he had traveled a long distance for it, and this was repeated many times, in addition to procrastination in providing responses to requests to submit a visit, which sometimes extended for two weeks or more, in addition to the attacks and threats that detainees were exposed to in prisons before and after they left to meet the lawyer. It also recently prevented a group of lawyers from making visits to detainees.
The Commission and the Club pointed out that the occupation continues to impose the crime of enforced disappearance against the majority of Gaza detainees, by preventing legal teams and the Red Cross from communicating with them, noting that the institutions’ recent attempts after the amendments that affected some of the regulations related to Gaza detainees, enabled some lawyers to visit a limited number of them under strict procedures, such that the lawyer is subjected to a complete search, and is
prevented from entering any paper with any notes on it for the detainee.
The Authority and the Club stressed the importance of the great and important role played by Palestinian lawyers, especially in the phase of the war of extermination that we are witnessing, and the unprecedented level of crimes, and called for the necessity of working to protect the role of legal teams and supporting them by international human rights institutions in the face of the series of restrictions to which they are exposed, in order to carry out their important and necessary role at all levels.
Source: Maan News Agency