Adalah and PCATI demand a criminal investigation into the extremely violent actions of prison guards that resulted in the death and injuries of Palestinian political prisoners
Following events that occurred at the Ketziot prison, including acts of extreme violence against Palestinian political prisoners, on 21 November 2007 Adalah and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) sent a letter to the head of the National Prison Guards Investigation Unit of the Israeli police force, demanding the opening of a criminal investigation and the indictment of those responsible. In a separate joint letter, Adalah and PCATI demanded that the head of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to provide appropriate conditions of confinement for prisoners incarcerated at the Ketziot prison, in view of the current inhumane conditions.
Adalah Attorney Noor Alatownh and Attorney Yaara Kalmanovitz from PCATI gathered testimonies from the prisoners assaulted by prison guards at the Ketziot prison in the middle of the night of 22 October 2007. According to the prisoners' testimonies, IPS guards attacked the tents in which the prisoners are confined, apparently in order to conduct searches. The prisoners were awoken at two o'clock in the morning by the sounds of live bullet fire and screams, and were assaulted by hundreds of guards carrying various kinds of weapons and wearing masks to cover their faces. The guards opened fire on the prisoners, hurled abuses at them, humiliated them and dragged the 400 or so prisoners into a small “visiting” room.
During the events, a prisoner named Mohammed Sati Mahmoud was killed, a large number of prisoners were injured and a fire broke out in the prison. Many prisoners lost personal possessions in the fire. The letter included three testimonies given by injured men as well as by eyewitnesses to the killing of Mr. Sati Mahmoud. According to the affidavits, one of the guards approached Mr. Sati Mahmoud, who was watching the events unfold, and fired at him at a distance of one meter; he was transferred to hospital after the fire broke out and not immediately after he was injured. The autopsy of the deceased man confirms the contents of the prisoners' affidavits regarding the opening of fire at a range of one meter.
In the letter to the head of the IPS, Adalah and PCATI argued that the IPS had failed to provide suitable medical treatment to the injured prisoners, and chose to transfer those with serious injuries to hospital, leaving the other injured men in the prison and moving them to another part of the prison without receiving medical attention. Mr. Sati Mahmoud was not given the appropriate treatment and the IPS failed to transfer him to hospital in time, which tragically led to his death. The letter therefore emphasized the need to put in place clear directives for the medical treatment of prisoners and their transfer to hospital.
According to the testimony of a prisoner named Majdi Salit, who was shot by a live bullet in the thigh, the doctor who treated him did not remove the bullet from his body, despite his requests. Mr. Salit was forced to extract the bullet himself. Only on the following day was he permitted to go to the clinic again to receive a tetanus injection.
Moreover, some of the injured prisoners have yet to receive any medical treatment, regardless of their urgent requests. In the letter, Adalah and PCATI emphasized that the IPS is duty-bound to administer the appropriate treatment to the prisoners, particularly to those who have not yet been treated.
As Adalah and PCATI argued, the families of some of the prisoners have attempted to contact the prison in order to gain information about their relatives through lawyers, but received no answer. The organizations stressed that it is the IPS's duty to enable the prisoners' families to receive news of their relatives via telephone.
Additionally, lawyers were not allowed to hold meetings with the prisoners until forty-eight hours after the incident. The same was true in the case of prisoners who were transferred to the Soroka Hospital. The IPS prevented a prisoner called Amjad Subhi from meeting his lawyer for a full week after the events. “Barring meetings between prisoners and their lawyers violates the prisoners' basic rights” argued the organizations, “and the directives in this regard must be amended. Further, the prison guards and the medial staff in the hospitals must be made aware of these directives.”
In the letter, Adalah and PCATI stressed the need for adequate funds to be allocated to the prisoners and that their families to be allowed to transfer money to them to purchase the personal items that they lost in the fire, including clothes, shoes and other essential items.
In the second letter, which was sent to the head of the National Prison Guards Investigation Unit of the Israeli police force, Attorneys Alatownh and Kalmanovitz demanded that a criminal investigation be opened into the actions of the prison guards, regardless of whether or not an external commission has been appointed to investigate these events. This is because the affidavits gathered by Adalah and PCATI indicate that the members of the “Massada” unit, who participated alongside the IPS guards in the attack on the prisoners, committed criminal offenses.
