WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime will pay the price if Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan dies while in detention, an Islamic Jihad official has warned.
“Israel is fully responsible for the life of the captive Khader Adnan,” the movement’s national relations head, Khaled al-Batsh, said in a statement.
Al-Batsh urged all parties making efforts to save Adnan’s life “to continue pressuring the Israeli occupation to end his [Adnan’s] suffering before it is too late.”
“The Israeli attempts to circumvent and mislead by presenting fake indictments, through which it seeks to issue an unfair Israeli judicial ruling, constitute an open conspiracy aimed at distancing Adnan from his people, his family, and his relatives,” al-Batsh said, stressing that such attempts would “fail with Adnan’s steadfastness and will”
Adnan has been on a hunger strike for 74 days in protest against his arbitrary detention by the Zionist regime. His lawyer said that his strike was “threatening his life.”
The 44-year-old, from the town of Arraba, in the northern West Bank district of Jenin, was detained on 5 February and immediately went on hunger strike in protest against his illegal detention.
In an interview last week, his wife said: “He passes out but not for long periods, he isn’t able to keep his balance, his health is in a very bad state and he’s struggling to breathe. The doctor has said that – God forbid – he may suffer a stroke at any time.”
Adnan has been arrested 12 times by Zionist regime authorities over the past 20 years for his political and anti-occupation activities and has spent a total of eight years behind bars.
He has been on hunger strike four times
Human rights organizations say the Zionist regime violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention. They say the so-called administrative detention violates their right to due process since the evidence is withheld from prisoners while they are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their detention.
Zionist regime authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards.
Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.