15 prisoners declare hunger strike in Ofer prison

15 Palestinian prisoners affiliated with Hamas Movement and held in Ofer prison declared on Monday morning an open hunger strike in solidarity with the isolated prisoner Shukri Khawaja.

Reliable sources told the PIC that the prisoners’ hunger strike came after the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) refused to meet Khawaja’s demands.

The Ofer prison administration threatened to transfer the hunger striker prisoners to solitary confinement, the sources said.

The isolated prisoner Shukri Khawaja spent more than 16 years behind Israeli bars in separate arrests, the last of which was in February 2014.

He was first held in administrative detention for four years before being sentenced to 15 years under the pretext of affiliation with Hamas Movement