Prisoner Mohammad Abu Tir’s transfer to Rakevet section seen as “death sentence”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said on Thursday that Israel’s decision to transfer Jerusalemite administrative detainee and elderly parliamentarian Mohammad Abu Tir, aged 75, to the underground Rakevet section in Nitzan Prison in Ramla amounts to a death sentence. 

In a statement, the organisation said that what happened to Abu Tir forms part of what it described as a systematic approach aimed at physically eliminating detainees, especially after repeated accounts from survivors who were held in this section, which is designated for detainees from Gaza.

It added that the Israeli authorities renewed Abu Tir’s administrative detention for four months, only eight days after his arrest following a raid on his home in Bethlehem in the central West Bank.

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The statement noted that the long-standing punitive measures against Abu Tir have continued for decades. His total time in detention since the 1970s has exceeded 44 years, most of it under administrative detention without charge or trial.

The Prisoners Club held the occupation authorities fully responsible for Abu Tir’s fate and safety, as well as for all detainees who, according to the statement, are facing actions it described as an extension of a policy of extermination.

It also noted that the occupation reopened the underground Rakevet section at the start of the war on Gaza. Former detainees have described it as a place associated with intimidation, torture and slow death for detainees from Gaza.

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