Re-arrested Gilbou’s breaker enters 3rd day of hunger strike against Israeli punitive measures

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Mohammad Arda, one of Gilbou’s six breakers who managed to free themselves last month from a high-security Israeli prison, has started on Monday an open hunger strike in protest against Israel’s punitive and repressive measures taken against him and his inmates after being re-arrested.

According to Karim Ajwa, a lawyer in the Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners and Freed Prisoners Committee, Arda has been placed in a small and dirty cell in Ashkelon prison.

He said that Arda is being monitored constantly in solitary confinement, including when he uses the toilet, depriving him of privacy.

The lawyer said last Friday, October 1, that Arda is considering a hunger strike if his prison conditions worsen in the coming days.

On Monday, October 4, Arda started his first day of hunger strike.

The Six Palestinian prisoners who managed to liberate themselves on September 6, from Gilbou prison: Mahmoud Arda, Mohammad Arda, Yaaqob Qadri, Ayham Kamanji, Zakaria Zubaidi and Munadel Infeiat.

Four of the six breakers, Mahmoud Arda, Mohammad Arda, Yaaqob Qadri, Zakaria Zubaidi, were rearrested by the Israeli occupation on September 11, after five days of large-scale sweep operations throughout occupied Palestine using high-tech systems and the two others, Munadel Infeiat and Ayham Kamanji, were rearrested on September 19, after 13 days.

On Thursday, Israel’s Prison Service (IPS) moved Gilbou’s six breakers to solitary confinement.

Khaled Mahajna, the lawyer of Mohammad Arda, wrote on Facebook on Friday that after Israeli authorities concluded the investigations with the prisoners over their successful jailbreak, they were moved to solitary incarceration in different jails. Mahajna described the IPS decision as “arbitrary.”

Meanwhile, Zubaidi is being held in the notorious desert prison of Eshel in the Negev, in southern occupied Palestine.

Kamanji has been moved to solitary confinement in Ohli Kedar prison, also in the Negev; Qadri to Rimonim prison, and Infeiat and Mahmoud Arda to Ayalon prison in Ramla.

The PA’s Prisoners Committee said that the occupation state intensified its pressure on Palestinian prisoners inside its jails, viewing them as “dangerous and a source of threat”.

The Committee said the occupation state had started a campaign to transfer prisoners between jails, so each Palestinian prisoner will not spend more than six months in the same cell and no more than a year in the same prison section.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have also started on Tuesday a series of protest campagin in response to the punitive and repressive measures taken against them by the Israel Prison Service (IPS), including torture, solitary confinement, interrogations and denying the access of essential services for them.

The recent repression and punitive measures against many of them came as a collective punishment following the Gilbou’s break.