160 Palestinian minors are currently held in the Israeli occupation jails

The Palestinian Prisoners Society has stressed that 160 Palestinian minors are held by the Israeli occupation in its jails in a blatant violation of international law and international conventions, mainly Convention against torture and the children’s rights convention.

Marking World Children’s Day, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said that Israel killed 15 Palestinian students and detained 1149 minors since the beginning of this year until the end of October and that two-thirds of the detained children have been physically tortured.

The Prisoners’ Society said that the Israeli authorities has detained around 19,000 Palestinian children since the year 2000, pointing out that currently, 160 Palestinian minors are held in three Israeli prisons.

 According to WAFA News Agency, the Palestinian Ministry of Education said while the Israeli forces killed 15 students since the start of the year, they also detained 78 students during raids at their homes and schools, and that the Israeli occupation forces carried out 100 raids against schools, firing teargas and rubber and live bullets at the students, causing dozens of injuries.

The Israeli occupation authorities practice various forms of torture against detained children during and after their detention, in a systematic and widespread manner, which is a grave violation of international law, especially the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, said the Prisoners Society in its statement.

It said that from the moment of their arrest, children undergo harsh interrogation. They are arrested at night at their homes, beaten in front of their families, handcuffed and blindfolded, kept without food or drink for long hours, subjected to interrogation without the presence of their families, undergo psychological and physical torture, forced to make confessions and sign papers without knowing their content, threatened and intimidated, subjected to interrogation by intelligence officers, and detained in interrogation centers for periods of up to two months.

Hamda Mustafa