Zionist-puppet Abbas government’s political arrests, torture skyrocketing in the West Bank (report)

Palestinian Authority security apparatuses have lately intensified their treacherous and nefarious arrest campaigns and summonses against political activists in the West Bank.

A lot more Palestinian political activists are being arrested these days by the Palestinian Authority security forces, human rights organizations report.

The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) has reported that in the past six months Palestinian security forces intensified their raids and arrests particularly in the last three months where many torture complaints have been filed, a thing that ruins the positive atmosphere which prevailed during the war on Gaza.

In October 2014 alone, ICHR reported 7 cases of torture, 102 complaints about violations of legal procedures and 32 complaints against illegality of detaining procedures, which happened either because of political or arbitrary reasons. ICHR also documented 6 cases of violations against freedom of expression, speech, the press and assembly.

Meanwhile, the September report of ICHR documented 7 complaints in the West Bank, and an assault on a public figure, MP Dr. Hassan Khreisheh, who got shot at.

The Independent Commission further continues to receive complaints about seizure of personal property at the hand of the Palestinian security forces without a court order. Violations against freedoms of expression, speech, the press, assembly and journalists, ICHR reports, have markedly risen.

Targeting Students
Meanwhile, Relatives of Political Prisoners Committee in the West Bank condemned the escalating purely political arrest campaigns by Palestinian security forces all over the West Bank.

The Committee announced that the past weeks in the West Bank witnessed a significant rise in the number of political arrests and summonses that mostly, targeted without any legal basis, university students.

Human rights activist, Salah Awad, pointed out that the cases documented by ICHR and other human rights bodies, which register only the complaints they receive, do not reflect the real figures on the ground, since many do not file complaints against the security forces.

Awad added that the reports produced do not include summonses on political grounds which happen on daily basis. Although some are summoned daily for long times, they are not labeled “detainees”.

According to Awad, the Palestinian law might give security forces the power to summon people, but this procedure is constantly violated especially when it comes to how the security forces crack down upon social media activists, some of whom are subjected to a “semi-arrest” situation. And thus, PA security forces avoid being accused of conducting political arrests.

Abbas’s decision
Dr. Abdel Sattar Qasem, Prof. of political science, stated that politically motivated arrests and violations of public freedoms will continue as part of the functional role the Palestinian Authority plays.

“The arrests aim at curbing the resistance and maintaining PA’s control in the West Bank,” Qasem emphasized.

For Dr. Hassan Khreisheh, second deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the political arrests are a decision that president Mahmoud Abbas takes and can stop.

Khreisheh stressed that the security forces in the West Bank do not work on their own in regard to political arrests. The problem is that there is no order from president Abbas to them to stop that, he added.

“If president [Abass] genuinely wants to stop the arrests against political activists, those arrests will immediately stop. Security forces will not disobey the order. But that’s not happening now,” Khreisheh stated.