Raed Salah alleges torture in Israeli prison

Head of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Raed Salah says he has been chained while being held in an Israeli prison, according to the Palestinian Information Centre.

Speaking after a court hearing yesterday, Salah said that his hands and feet were chained together to the extent that it was causing him severe pain.

“I had been cuffed with three chains from Ramon jail to Al-Jalama [prison]. I felt that my hands were going to be broken.”

Salah was re-arrested on 15 August after his house in Umm Al-Fahm was raided. He was charged with “inciting violence and terrorism”. The Magistrates’ Court extended his detention several times.

Read: Israel arrests 20 Palestinians a day

Earlier this month, Salah’s lawyer Khaled Zbarga spoke about the Palestinian leader’s case at a MEMO event in London. He informed the audience that the arrest was brought about at the request of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, although there were little grounds to charge him.

Zbarga also spoke of the conditions of Salah’s imprisonment, which he said were designed to humiliate him by giving him no private access to sanitation facilities, such that he is under constant CCTV observation. When his legal team approached the court to rectify this, they were told that the orders to hold him in such a fashion “came from above”.

Read: Palestinian prisoners’ group hails Amnesty report on administrative detention