IPFS

Profile of a Palestinian Political Prisoner

Written by Subject: Israel - Palestine

Profile of a Palestinian Political Prisoner

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Horrendous Israeli mistreatment of Ghassan Zawahreh never got him international recognition like Ahed Tamimi achieved.

He's like many thousands of other past and current persecuted Palestinian political prisoners, brutalized by a ruthless apartheid state, his long ordeal perhaps what Ahed faces ahead.

Ghassan, aged-36, married with three children, is a Dheisheh refugee camp resident. Israel arrested him multiple times, incarcerating him for around 12 years, a third of his life, mostly administratively uncharged and untried - despite guilty of no crimes.

His right hand, left leg and knee  were badly injured from earlier beatings by occupation forces. 

Since July 2016, he's been administratively detained uncharged and untried four times, invented "evidence" against him kept secret. Other members of his family were imprisoned for political reasons.

While wrongfully languishing in Israel's gulag, occupation forces lethally shot his brother Moataz during a nonviolent Dheisheh camp protest.

His brother Mohammed was imprisoned for five years. His younger brothers Ahmad and Hamdan were both arrested and imprisoned.

Ghassan is a Dheisheh camp activist, involved in providing social services to other camp refugees. He worked as a taxi driver to support his family.

He now faces trial on invented charges, conviction certain, guilty by accusation ahead of kangaroo court proceedings, how Israeli apartheid injustice works.

The Addameer prisoner support group explained military judges collaborate with Israel's arbitrary detention and imprisonment process against Palestinians - a tool for authorities to violate international humanitarian law, notably Fourth Geneva.

Horrific mistreatment of Ghassan and thousands of other Palestinians amounts to torture and degrading treatment - a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Geneva Conventions.

Addameer said detaining or imprisoning Palestinians guilty of no crimes is a "weapon" Israel uses against them, part of its illegal collective punishment regime.

Innocence is no defense. Once brought before Israeli military judges, convictions automatically follow. Rare exceptions prove the rule.

The world community fails to hold Israel accountable for its high crimes - making it complicit with its ruthlessness.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

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