Israel re-arrests prisoners released in exchange deal

By arresting Amre abu-Haniyyah, 21, the number of re-arrested former Palestinian prisoners released by the Palestinian-Israeli prisoner swap agreed last October, has reached 15, a specialist researcher said on Tuesday.

The director of the Palestinian Prisoners Centre for Studies (PPCS), Reyad al-Ashqar, said: “The Israeli occupation re-arrests released prisoners based on secret terms that neither prisoners nor their lawyers can see.”

According to article 186 of Military Order 1651, a special Israeli military committee, made up of three military judges, orders the re-arrest of prisoners that were released in the swap. Al-Ashqar said: “The released prisoners that Israel considers to have violated their release terms are subject to this article.”

Al-Ashqar said that the special Israeli committee can re-impose the remainder of the original sentence of any re-arrested prisoner.

---

In a statement received by MEMO, Al-Ashqar listed the names of all 15 prisoners. The most prominent are Mahmoud Tayem, who was ordered to complete the remainder of his original sentence and the hunger strikers Ayman al-Sharawneh and Samer al-Issawi, who started their strike ten and eight months ago.

Al-Ashqar said that re-arresting the released prisoners is considered a “pre-planned intention to get revenge on them for the shaken image of the occupation after it released 1027 prisoners.”

The specialist researcher at the PPCS demanded the Egyptian brokers of the prisoners swap intervene to secure the release of the re-arrested prisoners. He also called on human rights organizations to file complaints with the international courts to oblige the occupation to stick to the terms of the deal.