Prisoner to Continue with Hunger Strike, says Group

RAMALLAH, March 6, 2012 (WAFA) – Hana Shalabi, the Palestinian prisoner held in administrative detention in Israel, is continuing with the hunger strike she has started following her arrest on February 16 in spite of a military court ruling reducing her six-month sentence by two months, a statement by the Palestinian advocacy group, Addameer, said on Tuesday.

According to Muna Naddaf, an Addameer-affiliated lawyer who visited Shalabi in her prison cell on Monday, Shalabi has not eaten and has only been drinking water since her arrest.

“During the past four days, she has only been able to drink 1.5 liters of water total due to experiencing extreme nausea, though she has not been vomiting,” said the lawyer. “She stated that she is feeling pain in her chest below her heart and pain above her waist, in addition to dizziness.”

Shalabi had also difficulty speaking without pausing, and would breathe for moments before resuming speech. She also looked very tired and did not move very much, said Naddaf.

An Israeli military court decided on Sunday to shorten Shalabi’s administrative detention order from six months to four months. However, Shalabi said she was going to continue in the hunger strike she had started “in protest of the torture, assault and degrading treatment to which she has been subjected and of her ongoing detention without charge or trial,” said Addameer.

Hana told the lawyer that since February 27 she has refused medical examinations by Israeli Prison Service (IPS) doctors. She also said she would only agree to receive medical attention from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel).

The IPS denied Sunday a request made by PHR-Israel to allow its doctors to visit Shalabi on the grounds that granting visiting access to an external doctor is based on the right to a second medical opinion, and since Shalabi refuses to be examined by doctors from the IPS, she does not qualify as a case where such a visit is granted.

PHR-Israel immediately filed a petition to the District Court in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, demanding that the IPS approve without delay a visit by PHR-Israel doctors to Shalabi. The petition, which will be heard on Wednesday, states that according to the Israeli Medical Association, two weeks after the beginning of a hunger strike the decomposition of muscle tissue commences, including the heart muscle.

According to Addameer, Shalabi confirmed that on February 16, the day of her arrest, she was forcibly strip searched by a male soldier and assaulted at Salem Detention Center in the north of the West Bank.

She described the search as “utterly degrading” and that what the soldiers did to her was “not acceptable in all customs of the world.” She subsequently began her hunger strike and was placed in solitary confinement.
Palestine News & Info Agency - WAFA