Bar Association: Prisoners Are Subjected to the Harshest Forms of Torture, Abuse, and Cruel Treatment, Led by Commander Marwan Barghouti

SadaNews - The Bar Association stated in a press release this evening that coinciding with the Palestinian people's commemoration of Palestinian Prisoners' Day and the twenty-fourth anniversary of the arrest of national leader Marwan Barghouti, Palestinian prisoners in the occupation's prisons are subjected to the harshest forms of torture and abuse, in gross and ongoing violation of international norms and agreements.

The association clarified that the data coming from inside the prisons, through visits by a limited number of lawyers amidst the continued ban on visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross and family visits to prisoners, indicate that the severity of assaults against prisoners is unprecedented and continuously escalating. The latest of these assaults is the systematic attack against national leader Marwan Barghouti, coinciding with the twenty-fourth anniversary of his arrest.

The association added that these assaults are occurring against a backdrop of a systematic policy of medical neglect which has led to the martyrdom of dozens of prisoners in previous years.

The association pointed out that the continued silence of active international parties and their abandonment of their responsibilities towards what the prisoners are enduring provides cover for further crimes and violations that humiliate international law each time and make it a law applied to the weak, pushing towards a complete collapse of the international justice system. It stressed that the path of legal accountability for what the prisoners are subjected to is a moral and legal duty that is indispensable in the context of attempting to restore what remains of international justice.