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Hélène Flautre, French Green MEP: “We will ask the Israeli authorities if we can visit the prisons and see things with our own eyes.”
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BRUSSELS (EJP)---Several members of the European Parliament regretted Israel’s embassy’s decision not to send a representative to a hearing on the situation of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons that took place on Wednesday in Brussels.
"A written invitation was sent to Israel’s embassy to the EU but they declined," an official of the European Parliament told EJP.
"It is highly regrettable that the Israeli ambassador has refused our invitation. Unlike he said in a letter sent yesterday, there are political prisoners in Israeli prisons," Hélène Flautre, a French Green MEP, who chaired the hearing of the parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, said.
Richard Howitt, a British Labour MEP, aslo deplored the absence of an Israeli representative. "Here in the European Parliament we always try to hear both sides," he said.
A spokesman of the Israeli embassy to the EU later denied that the ambassador had receveid such an invitation. "We didn't show up because we were not invited, " Sagi Karni told EJP.
He called the hearing "biased and unbalanced."
At the hearing, the subcommittee heard Ashraf Al Ajrami, the Palestinian Authority's minister for prisoners' affairs, Fadwa Ibrahim of the “Free Marwan Barghouti Campaign” and Anat Barsella of B'Tselem, from the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Barghouti, leader of the Fatah Tanzim, was arrested in 2002 on charges of murder of Israeli civilians and attacks on Israeli soldiers.
Flautre called the situation of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons as "dramatic." She cited the number of 10,000 detainees, 355 of which are minors and 48 are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
She said detention conditions in Israeli prisons "are against international law and international conventions."
Since 1967 a number equivalent to over a third of the Palestinian population has spent time in jail, Fadwa Ibrahim, wife of Marwan Barghouti, declared.
Ashraf Al Ajrami told MEPs that the "torture of the prisoners is not only acknowledged but legally authorised by Israel," and added that "the EU should push Israel to respect humanitarian law".
Flautre said the European parliament should send a fact-finding mission to Israel. “We will ask the Israeli authorities if we can visit the prisons and see things with our own eyes.”