Palestinian, re-jailed after Shalit deal, on hunger strike

RAMALLAH

A Palestinian woman freed in a prisoner swap with Israel but later re-arrested has gone on hunger strike, a Palestinian lawyer said Feb. 26.

Hanaa al-Shalabi has been on hunger strike since the day of her arrest on Feb. 16, when she was ordered detained without trial for six months, said lawyer Fawaz al-Shuli who visited her in prison. “She is determined to carry on her hunger strike even though the Israeli prison authorities decided to isolate her,” he said.

She was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in October in a trade for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The Israeli army said she was “a global jihad-affiliated operative” and was re-arrested on suspicion that she “posed a threat to the area.”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club says she is one of five inmates freed in the October swap who have since been re-arrested. Shalabi “is demanding the end of administrative detention (imprisonment without charge) and that the soldiers who beat her up and undressed her to carry out a body search be put on trial,” he said.

Her refusal to be fed comes as Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan on Feb. 21 ended a 66-day hunger strike in protest at his imprisonment without charge, under a deal that will see him released in April.
Shalabi spent 30 months in detention before her release last year.Adnan’s protest, the longest hunger strike carried out by any Palestinian prisoner, attracted international attention and threw a spotlight on Israel’s use of administrative detention, a military procedure which allows suspects to be held without charge indefinitely.