Jordan Times
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Gov't urged to
secure release of all prisoners in Israel
By Alia Shukri Hamzeh
AMMAN — Former Jordanian prisoners in Israel said
on Monday government efforts to release the remaining detainees were
“insufficient,” but officials insisted they were doing their utmost to free all
citizens there.
Seven ex-detainees, who were freed by Israel last month, told reporters that the
government should exert greater effort and cooperate with activists and civil
society organisations to help release the remaining citizens.
“We hoped that government efforts to ensure the release of the prisoners would
amount to the level of public support by ordinary people and civil society
institutions, but the gap is very wide,” Wael Amir, one of the freed prisoners,
told reporters at a press conference organised by the Higher Executive Committee
for Defending the Nation and Countering Normalisation.
Foreign Ministry officials, however, said they were striving to free all
citizens held in Israeli jails, including four who were detained before the 1994
peace treaty with the Jewish state.
The Kingdom's Ambassador to Israel Marouf Bakhit, who was reinstated in
February, told The Jordan Times that he was in continuous talks with Israeli
officials on the release of all Jordanian detainees.
And Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Rajab Sukayri said: “We will not stop until
the last one of them [the prisoners] is freed.”
On April 17, the Israeli Cabinet unanimously voted to release nine Jordanian
prisoners — seven of them returned on the 22nd of last month. The other two, who
remained in the Palestinian territories with their families, were arrested later
“for unknown reasons” and the government is currently looking into the issue.
Amir said the Jewish state was still holding 28 Jordanians, but according to
Bakhit, there were 14 citizens in Israeli jails on security charges — six of
them said they wanted to remain in the West Bank with relatives.
The former prisoner added that there were also 19 missing citizens and that the
government failed to question the Israeli authorities over their fate. The
diplomat, however, said there were 15 missing.
“Some of those have been missing since 1948... it's extremely difficult to trace
them because this needs a lot of time and thorough investigation,” Bakhit said.
The freed citizens blamed prisoners' families for not informing authorities
about the arrest of their sons, adding that the embassy in Israel should carry
out regular visits to jails to check on the Jordanian detainees' conditions.
“The prisoners are isolated from the outside world and they are not allowed to
see their families,” Amir said. “Some of the practices by Israeli jailers are
beyond description and far beneath respect to any human dignity.”
Bakhit insisted that he and other embassy officials were regularly visiting the
jails and meeting with the Jordanian prisoners.