Majority of Palestinian kids tortured in Israeli detention: Prisoner affairs groupV

Israel tortures and humiliates an “overwhelming majority” of the Palestinian children it holds in its jails, says the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs.

Following a visit to the Ofer prison, a lawyer for the committee, Luay Ukka, said that most of the juvenile prisoners held at the prison have been “tortured, beaten, and humiliated” during interrogations or during the raids in which they were detained.

He also noted an increase of such detentions, adding that as of mid-October the number of minor Palestinian prisoners in the Ofer had reached 28, half of whom being under the age of 14.

According to the Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) rights group, there has been a sharp rise in the number of administrative detention cases of Palestinian children over the past few months.

The so-called administrative detention is a manner of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows the Tel Aviv regime to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods.

In September, the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs reported that at least 1,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year.

More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 Israeli jails, many of them arbitrarily.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to voice outrage at the so-called administrative detention policy, which is a form of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months.