WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian lawmaker and member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Khalida Jarrar, has recounted her painful experience as a female prisoner in the Zionist regime’s jails including the death of two of her family members while in detention.
Speaking to Quds Press, Jarrar said the most painful experience was the death of her own daughter, Suha, only two months prior to her release. The occupying regime barred her from attending her daughter’s funeral.
“During my last arrest, my daughter died, and in the one before that my father died,” she said.
Jarrar explained that during her latest detention from which she was released only two months ago, the Zionist regime’s prison authority deliberately transferred her, for a whole month, on a daily basis, either for investigations in al-Maskobiya Prison, or for trial in Ofer Prison.
She explained that the prison authority took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to deprive prisoners of their visitation rights for over nine months.
Speaking of the prison conditions, she pointed out that the prison authority deliberately restricts female prisoners by placing surveillance cameras in the outer courtyard to limit their privacy, adding that “the amount of air that enters the detention cells is insufficient”.
“The showers area is located outside the rooms, so if the prison administration prohibits the prisoners from leaving their cells, days could go by without a shower,” she said.
Fifty-eight-year-old Jarrar was detained from her home in Ramallah city on 31 October 2019 and accused of membership in the PFLP, a group banned by the Zionist regime.
She had been released from jails months earlier, in February, after spending 20 months in the so-called administrative detention.
Meanwhile, a former Zionist officer has reflected on torture tactics employed by the occupying regime’s Shin Bet spy agency which saw him get arrested, tormented, and imprisoned for years on end.
The apparatus apprehended Ezzat Nafsous, a ranking official at the time, in 1980, and forced him to confess to “spying for Lebanon.” He was eventually indicted at an Israeli court and incarcerated for “seven years and a half.”
In an interview with the Ha’aretz, Nafsous was asked why “innocent people” were being forced by the agency to admit to crimes they never committed.
“Because, even if you are innocent, it would be crazy to choose not to confess to what they want you to confess,” said the 66-year-old. “Anyone who insists on refusing to confess, even falsely, is crazy.”
“Because they break you down psychologically,” he noted.
He went on to explain how the interrogation process unfolds by saying, “They try to discover you over the first two days” before realizing your weak points and starting to use them against you.