RAMALLAH: On Monday, the body of a Palestinian prisoner was returned to Sa'ir, a West Bank village near Hebron. 30-year-old Arafat Jaradat died on Saturday, ostensibly as a result of intensive torture sustained during a ten-day interrogation period with Israel's Shin Bet secret service outfit. Jaradat was detained in recent weeks for throwing stones, according to several Palestinian media sources. Although Israeli officials have claimed that he died as a result of a heart attack, his autopsy suggests that he did not sustain such a heart attack and bore visible marks of torture. The Palestinian Authority Minister of Detainee Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said that the autopsy revealed several broken bones in the prisoner's body. “The information we have received so far is shocking and painful. The evidence corroborates our suspicion that Mr. Jaradat died as a result of torture, especially since the autopsy clearly proved that the victim's heart was healthy, which disproves the initial alleged account presented by occupation authorities that he died of a heart attack,” Qaraqe told a press conference in Ramallah, reports Ma'an News Agency. Other reports reveal that Jaradat had bruises and injuries on the inside of his lips, on his face, and in his nose. On Sunday, some 4,500 prisoners in Israeli lockup launched a hunger strike to protest Jaradat's death, says Israeli Prison Services. Tensions in the occupied West Bank were already boiling over, as another four administrative detainees, held on “secret evidence" with neither charge nor trial, are on long-term hunger strike: Samer Al-Issawi has gone some 215 days without food to protest his administrative detention; Tarak Qa'adan and Jazar Ezzedine are quickly approaching the 90 day mark; and Ayman Sharawna, a former hunger striker who went roughly six months without food last year, has restarted his hunger strike, though the precise date he began is unknown. On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators clashed with Israeli soldiers across the West Bank, and protests were staged across the Gaza Strip as well. Protests are expected to continue despite Israel's having called on the Palestinian Authority to calm the unrest. Jaradat's body arrived in Sa'ir around noon on Monday, along with Palestinian Authority police forces. According to one witness, representatives from Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine were all present for his funeral. Palestinians have called for an international investigation into Jaradat's death, AP reports. Israeli soldiers patrol Hebron's old city. According to Addameer Prisoner Support Network, there were 4,812 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as of February 1. From that total, 219 were children, and 31 were under 16-years-old. 12 were women. Prisoners regularly complain of torture, however Israel denies these allegations. Torture was only banned by the Supreme Court in 1999, before having been a legal method of interrogation. “Since the Supreme Court's decision, and especially since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada, various public officials have called for legislation to allow torture during interrogations," says B'Tselem, an Israel human rights organization. The organization accuses the state of systematically ignoring torture complaints and failing to investigate them as required under international law. “From the beginning of 2001 to the end of March 2011, more than seven hundred complaints alleging ISA abuse of interrogees [were] filed with the State Attorney's Office. The State Attorney's Office did not order a criminal investigation into any of the complaints." BN
