Israeli Supreme Court refuses yet again to release Palestinian hunger-striking detainee Awawda
The Israeli Supreme Court today refused yet again to release Palestinian detainee Khalil Awawda, who has been on an open-ended hunger strike for 171 days in protest of his detention without charge or trial, despite his serious health condition and growing demands to release him.
Awawda’s lawyer, Ahlam Haddad said that the court argues that they are not an appeal body against the decision issued on August 21, and that “we did not bring anything new for the decision to be changed from freezing [his administrative detention] to being released.”
Human rights organizations published Sunday pictures of Awawda which showed that he had reached a critical stage as a result of his continuation of the strike, and he looked like a skeleton.
The European Union expressed its shock at the pictures of Awawda, describing them as “horrible”, and said he “is in imminent danger of dying,” demanding that, “Unless charged immediately, he has to be released.”
Awawda, a father of four girls, and detained since December 27 of last year after which he was slammed with administrative detention for six months, resumed his hunger strike on July 2 after suspending it earlier after 111 days of strike based on promises to release him before the occupation authority has reneged on its promise and renewed his administrative detention for four more months.
In a video message from his hospital bed, where he is kept following a serious deterioration in his health due to the long and unprecedented period of his fast, Awawda called on the free of the world to stand b by his demand for freedom from captivity in Israel.
“To the free people of the world, this rickety body, of which only bone and skin remains, does not reflect weakness and nakedness of the Palestinian people, but rather it is a mirror for the real face of the occupation that claims to be a democratic state while there is a prisoner without charge in barbaric administrative detention to say with his flesh and blood: no to administrative detention, no to administrative detention,” said Awawda in the short video published yesterday.
Over the years, Israel has placed thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for prolonged periods of time, without trying them, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their counsel to examine the evidence.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)