As actions across Palestine and around the world in support of imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa’adat continue, the illegitimate Israeli occupation military court in Bir Saba today extended Sa’adat’s isolation for six additional months.
Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, continued his boycott of the occupation courts, stating that these courts are illegitimate, invalid and can produce nothing but a mockery of justice, and that these courts are part and parcel of the war machine that continues its aggression against the Palestinian people, with isolation another weapon in their arsenal.
Sa’adat has already been held in isolation for over six months, in a special solitary confinement unit at Ramon prison where he is confined without access even to the other prisoners in the larger isolation unit, and deprived of basic human rights. His personal books have been confiscated and he is routinely denied access to television, newspapers or any other source of information.
He has been denied family visits - his wife, Abla, has been denied visits for three months - as well as legal visits, and barred from purchases at the prison canteen, including cigarette purchases. In the prison yard, Sa’adat has been held handcuffed and in ankle shackles and allowed only one-hour of exercise/recreation. All of this has been ‘justified’ by the occupation authorities as ‘punishment’ for giving two packs of cigarettes to another prisoner.
The Prison Administration is attempting to criminalize the human and social relationship between fellow Palestinian prisoners, and between the prisoners and their families outside. Palestinian national leaders, such as Sa’adat, have been particularly targeted for isolation, solitary confinement and similar punitive mechanisms and violations of their human rights, in order to suppress the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, which has been at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination.
WFDY reasserts its solidarity with comrade Saadat and all Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and strongly condemn the illegal and inhumane decisions of the Israeli authorities to ban Saadat from basic life conditions, after banning the Palestinian people from a country to live in.
WFDY calls for more actions of solidarity through our organizations in every country and through the international campaign to free Ahmad Saadat, calls on the Isareli authorities to immediately release Saadat and on the UN and international bodies to take their responsibilities in his release from his illegal imprisonment.