Call for action against Israeli administrative detention

The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR) has called for international action against Israel’s policy of administrative detention. The organisation has released a detailed report about the process.

“Israel,” alleges the AOHR, “uses administrative detention to imprison Palestinians without charge based on primary intelligence or as a pre-emptive measure to undermine any Palestinian project.”

---

In an effort to sabotage the work of the freely-elected Palestinian Legislative Council, for example, in 2006 the Israeli government detained many Palestinian parliamentarians. According to the AOHR report, 51 parliamentarians and ministers were detained, each spending a different periods in prison; 12 are still behind bars.

Such detention is illegal, AOHR said in a statement, and violates international human rights laws and conventions. In the light of this, the organisation has called for the immediate release for all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, with the release of administrative detainees as a priority, as well as serious international action against the Israeli government to make it end the policy.