MARWAN Barghouti, a leading member of the Fatah organisation in the West Bank who has been held in detention by Israel since 13 April, yesterday urged Palestinians to press ahead with their resistance to Israel's military occupation. Barghouti's message, as relayed by his lawyer, Jawad Boulos, who visited the activist yesterday, said, "Peace is the shortest way to security and stability. But peace cannot be built on occupation." Barghouti, whose health has deteriorated since he was incarcerated, was admitted to the clinic of the Moscowbiya (Russian Compound) prison in Jerusalem on Monday, a day after an Israeli military court extended his detention for another 12 days. On Tuesday, Khader Shkirat and Hassan Jabareen, heads of the Palestinian human rights organisations LAW and Adalah respectively, visited the activist. "Barghouti's hands and legs are shackled to a small chair that has been tilted forward so that he cannot sit in a stable position. His back is bleeding due to nails protruding from the chair upon which he was forced to sit for long hours," Shkirat and Jabreen said in a press release issued on Tuesday. Barghouti had been kept in solitary confinement and deprived of sleep for 20 hours a day since his arrest, the statement said. "Like abusive body positioning, sleep deprivation is a common tactic used by the Israeli General Security Service, it undermines a detainee's concentration and self-control." The statement also said that Barghouti's interrogators had invoked the Israeli prime minister in their demands that he confess, adding that they had said they would kill his son, who they claimed to have in detention in Ashkelon, unless Barghouti was forthcoming with information. Calling for Barghouti's immediate release and requesting immediate international intervention to protect him from further physical and psychological abuse, the statement concluded: "He is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and has parliamentary immunity. The methods applied by the Israeli General Security Service during the interrogation of Barghouti constitute methods of torture and ill-treatment."
