Palestinian prisoner ends hunger strike after more than six weeks

A Palestinian prisoner in Israeli detention has ended a hunger strike after more than six weeks.

Sixty-one-year-old Hossam Ruzza ended his hunger strike yesterday evening, after occupation authorities agreed not to renew his administrative detention order.

He is thus due to be released on 13 July.

According to a statement by prisoners’ rights group Addameer, released shortly before Ruzza ended his hunger strike, a lawyer’s visit on 30 April confirmed that the prisoner’s health was deteriorating.

Addameer’s lawyer said Ruzza had lost 25 kilogrammes since he began his strike on 19 March, and “his blood glucose level has dropped to 60, as he has begun to suffer from poor blood pumping and liver complications”. He was also suffering from “stomach and waist pain”.

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Israeli occupation forces arrested Hossam Ruzza on 17 April 2018, “and issued an administrative detention order against him, which was extended 3 times”.

Israeli occupation authorities hold hundreds of Palestinians in detention without charge or trial, under so-called “administrative detention”, indefinitely renewable by military courts.

Addameer urged “all contracting parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to pressure the occupying state in order to end the administrative detention policy, practiced by the occupation authorities in violation of all international law norms”, a policy it said “represents a tool of vengeance and torture against Palestinian prisoners”.

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