The day after her release from Israeli jails, former MP and activist Khalida Jarrar gave a poignant testimony on the conditions of detention in Israel.
At the beginning of last summer, the hell of the Sde Teiman detention camp, the “Israeli Guantánamo”, had already been revealed by several whistleblowers, including a doctor who was able to go to this place where prisoners would be kept tied up, blindfolded, naked, wearing only a diaper to relieve themselves. Inhumane detention conditions that NGOs do not fail to denounce.
This week, after her release from an Israeli prison as part of the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, former Palestinian MP and activist Khalida Jarrar was, in turn, able to testify about the “ill-treatment” she suffered. by Palestinian prisoners. Bleached hair, pale face, haggard look, this figure of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was unrecognizable when he arrived in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. When she was released, she said she was initially unable to speak. “It was the first time I spoke to a human being, after six months of isolation in my cell,” she told AFP, including The Parisian And The Orient-The day echo.
“Frequent attacks” and “regular spraying of gas”
Now 61 years old, Khalida Jarrar has passed through Israeli prisons several times and she assures: “Since 1967, conditions have never been as harsh as today.” According to her, Palestinian prisoners would suffer “frequent attacks” and “regular spraying of gas”. Judging the “food rations to be insufficient and of poor quality”, the former Palestinian MP also deplores the “policy of isolation practiced by the Israeli authorities”. Palestinian prisoners are “treated as if they were not human beings,” explains the woman who also runs Addameer, an organization defending prisoners held by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli prison authorities deny any accusation. They assure that, according to their information, “no incident of this type has occurred in the prisons under [leur] responsibility” and remind that those who wish can absolutely “file a complaint, which will be examined carefully”. The fact remains that since the attack of October 7, human rights NGOs have increased the number of alerts , also reporting a deterioration in the conditions of detention of Palestinians, with mistreatment and torture.