Ramallah – Ma’an – The Israeli prison administration in the “Ramon” and “Nafha” prisons informed the lawyers who organize visits to the prisoners that the scheduled visits were cancelled without specifying a time period, under the pretext of imposing a quarantine on all sections of the prisoners due to the spread of scabies among the prisoners on a large scale; according to what the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club reported on Tuesday.
The Commission and the Prisoners Club explained in a joint statement that ‘scabies has spread widely among detainees in several prisons, specifically in the Negev, Megiddo, Nafha, and Rimon prisons, as a result of the retaliatory measures imposed by the prison administration on prisoners and detainees after October 7, which fall within the framework of the systematic and escalating policies of torture and abuse against prisoners, and which constitute one aspect of the ongoing war of extermination against our people in Gaza.’
We explained th
at “based on dozens of testimonies conveyed by lawyers from detainees inside prisons, in addition to the testimonies of released prisoners, scabies has spread widely for months in several central prisons, and the prison administration has actually turned the disease into a tool of torture and abuse by deliberately committing medical crimes against them, by depriving them of treatment, and not taking, as a prison authority, any of the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the disease.”
They confirmed that “many of the detainees were sometimes brought out for visits after a period of time had passed since their injury, and their bodies appeared disfigured from the disease, blood, and ulcers on their bodies from the effects of severe itching.”
The Commission and the Club pointed out that “the prison administration’s procedures imposed on prisoners, in addition to torture, were the main reason for the spread of the disease, the most prominent of which are: the lack of the necessary quantities of cleaning
materials, including those used to maintain personal hygiene, in addition to reducing the quantities of water and the periods available to the prisoner to shower, and withdrawing clothes from prisoners. Today, the majority of prisoners depend on one change of clothes, and some of them have been wearing the same clothes for long periods and are forced to wash them and wear them while they are wet, in addition to the state of severe overcrowding inside the sections with the escalation of daily arrest campaigns. The lack of ventilation and the isolation of prisoners in cells that lack sunlight have contributed greatly to the spread of diseases.”
They added, “The biggest crime committed by the prison administration against detainees despite the spread of the disease is the deliberate transfer of those infected with contagious diseases from one section to another, which contributed to the increase in the number of infections, noting that among the infected are child prisoners, specifically in the children’s secti
on of Megiddo Prison.”
The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Prisoners’ Club held the prison administration fully responsible for the fate of the detainees, especially since the prisons where scabies has spread contain dozens of sick prisoners, some of whom suffer from chronic and serious diseases.
They renewed their call for the international human rights system to overcome the ongoing state of international impotence in the face of the war of extermination, and to take clear decisions to hold the Israeli occupation state accountable, and to stop the comprehensive aggression against our people, including the crimes committed against prisoners and detainees in the occupation’s prisons and camps.
Source: Maan News Agency