The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has called on international organizations to hold the Tel Aviv regime to account for its harsh ill-treatment of a Palestinian prisoner that led to his loss of memory, stressing that the offense amounts to a crime against humanity.
The ministry said in a statement on Monday that Israeli authorities not only mistreated and abused Mohammad Obeid, a resident of the village of Anza which lies 18 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, in detention until he lost his memory but even left him on the side of a road near a checkpoint in the south of the West Bank without informing his family of his release.
All this happened despite the fact that IPS officials were aware of Obeid’s health problems, and that he was suffering from amnesia, the statement noted.
“This criminal, inhuman and racist behavior reflects what our heroic prisoners have to go through in the occupying regime’s prisons, including executions and poor sanitary conditions, and also summarizes the essence of Israeli policies against the entire Palestinian nation,” the Palestinian foreign ministry said.
The Palestinian ministry went on to hold the Israeli regime fully and directly responsible for the crime committed against Obeid.
It also called on relevant UN organizations and international bodies, particularly the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to assume their responsibilities, expose the magnitude of the crime, and hold Israeli officials to account for it.
It said the crime should be brought before specialized national and international courts of law in order to hold Israeli authorities to account for their criminal acts.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of the so-called “administrative detention”, a policy that allows Israel to hold detainees without charge or trial. Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.
Prison authorities keep Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression, according to Palestinian officials.
Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners under the Fourth Geneva Convention.