Scores of Palestinians Infected With COVID-19 in Zionist Regime Jails: Official

Date: 20 December 2020 - 21:09

News ID: ۸۵۶۶۰

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – 140 Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist regime’s prison have contracted COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic in early March this year, Hasan Abed Rabbo, a spokesman of the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Commission, said.
Abed Rabbo told official Voice of Palestine radio that the international community should bear a moral responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to pressure the occupying regime to ensure the health wellbeing and safety of the Palestinian prisoners.
He demanded all the concerned human rights organizations intervene to save the lives of the prisoners at this particular hard time.
The Palestinian official’s remarks came over a month after the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) put the coronavirus infections among Palestinian inmates at 123. The PPS also expressed grave concern over the health condition of the prisoners.
The Zionist regime has an infamous "administrative detention” system, under which it imprisons Palestinians without trial or charge. Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.
The occupying regime is also notorious for detaining minors for long periods of time.
In another report last month, the PPS said the Zionist regime had detained at least 400 Palestinian children in the first 10 months of the current year.
"The Israeli authorities continue to hold 170 Palestinian children in their prisons,” read the report, which was issued on November 19.
This is while 2020 has been described as "the worst year for Palestinian prisoners” in the occupying regime’s prisons, owning to the regime’s intensified violations of the prisoners’ rights and the spread of COVID-19 in Israeli jails.
"The year 2020 is the worst year for Palestinian prisoners. The prison administration raids and attacks detainees’ sections almost every day,” Qadri Abu Bakr, chairman of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, told Anadolu Agency earlier this month.