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Freed Palestinian activist recounts difficult times in Israeli jail

What struck those who knew Khalida Jarrar when she exited the bus with 77 other Palestinians released from Israeli jails was the whiteness of her hair and her broken voice.Jarrar, an activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said she lost her voice from six months in solitary confinement, and accused Israeli jails of “bad treatment”, which the Israeli Prison Service denies.She was released on Sunday in a first batch of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for hostages held in Gaza under a ceasefire deal between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel.The ceasefire, which began on Sunday, came after more than 15 months of devastating war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.The PFLP, which she represents in the Palestinian parliament that hasn’t convened since 2018, is a leftist movement blacklisted as a “terrorist organisation” by the European Union and the United States.On her arrival in Ramallah, relatives were shocked to find her pale-faced and wearing a dazed expression.”It was the first time I was speaking to a human being after six months of isolation in my cell,” she told AFP the next day, her hair dyed black.- Worsening conditions -Jarrar also heads Addameer, a human rights group that advocates for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. She has been repeatedly placed under administrative detention by Israel, a controversial measure that allows indefinite detention without charge.Her last stint in detention was in December 2023, following another 20 months in jail between 2018 and 2019, each time on grounds of “threatening the security of the state”.She also served two years in prison between 2019 and 2021, forcing her to miss the funeral of her daughter Suha, who died suddenly at the age of 31.In 2015, a military court charged her with 15 counts, including giving interviews, speeches and lectures, participating in marches and calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners.”Conditions (in jail) have never been as harsh as they are today,” she said, citing “frequent attacks”, “regular tear gas spraying” and “insufficient and poor-quality food rations”.She also condemned the “policy of isolation practised by the occupation authorities”.Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons are “treated as though they are not human beings”, she alleged, adding that the prisoner issue is “a Palestinian national cause”.- ‘Cemeteries’ -The Israel Prison Service denied the allegations.”We are unaware of these claims. According to our information, no such incidents have occurred in prisons under our responsibility,” it said.”Detainees have the right to file a complaint, which will be thoroughly investigated.”The day after her liberation, dozens of sympathisers visited Jarrar to congratulate her.Standing next to her was Abla Saadat, wife of PFLP general secretary Ahmad Saadat. She too was released in the exchange, after being interned without charge since September 2023.Her husband has been in jail since 2002 on charges of ordering the previous year’s assassination of far-right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi. He has been held by Israel since 2006.Abla Saadat fears she too will swiftly return to prison. She said that on the day of her release, she received a decision to renew her administrative detention for another six months.”The accusation against me is disrupting state security, without me knowing how,” she said.Prisons “have become cemeteries where prisoners feel suffocated,” said Saadat, a leader in the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, which Israel has designated a “terrorist organisation”.Since the October 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war, human rights groups including Israel’s B’Tselem have reported worsening detention conditions for Palestinians, including “systematic mistreatment” and “torture”.Like Jarrar, Abla Saadat has been imprisoned more than once. But her latest detention “was the hardest,” she said. “I am detained every time simply because I am Ahmed Saadat’s wife.”

Yemen’s Huthis say support for Palestinians led to US terrorist designation

Yemen’s Huthi rebels accused Washington on Thursday of designating them a terrorist group for supporting the Palestinian people, their stated motive for months of attacks on Israel and in the Red Sea.On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to once again blacklist the Iran-backed rebels as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, moving to reimpose the more restrictive categorisation after it was dropped by his predecessor.”The American designation targets all the Yemeni people and their honourable position in support of the oppressed Palestinian people,” said a Huthi statement quoted by the rebel-affiliated Al-Masirah TV channel. “This reflects the degree of bias on the part of the current American administration in favour of the usurper Zionist entity (Israel).”The Huthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, a collection of militant groups in the region arrayed against Israel. For more than a year they have waged a campaign of attacks on merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that has disrupted global shipping.They have also repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.The Huthis have said their attacks are in solidarity with the Palestinians. – ‘Pretext’ for sanctions -Iran too condemned the group’s terror designation on Thursday, with foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei saying the blacklisting was “a pretext for imposing inhumane sanctions against the Yemeni people”, describing it as “unjustified and baseless”.Iran insists that its allied groups act independently. Israel, meanwhile, welcomed the move, with Foreign Minister Gideon Saar calling it “an important step in fighting terror and combating the destabilising elements in our region”.The Huthis were blacklisted during Trump’s first term, but were removed in 2021 after his successor Joe Biden took office.The Biden administration last year put the Huthis back on the list of “specially designated global terrorist” groups, a slightly less severe classification that still allowed for humanitarian aid to reach the war-torn country.Trump’s redesignation order may take several weeks to come into effect. Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Huthis forced the internationally recognised government out of the capital Sanaa and much of the north and the Red Sea coast.The conflict has led to a dire humanitarian crisis, with a senior UN official saying more than 19.5 million people in Yemen will need assistance in 2025, including around 17 million who cannot meet their basic food needs.The Huthis urged the “international community and human rights organisations on Thursday to condemn” the terrorist designation, saying it would “have negative repercussions on the humanitarian situation in Yemen”.burs/smw/kir

ICC prosecutor seeks arrest of Taliban leaders over persecution of women

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Thursday said he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity.Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds”.Khan said that Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable,” added Khan.ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue the warrants — a process that could take weeks or even months.The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its warrants — with mixed results.In theory this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.Khan warned he would soon be seeking additional applications for other Taliban officials. – ‘A victory’ -Akhundzada inherited the Taliban leadership in May 2016 after a US drone strike in Pakistan killed his predecessor. Believed to be in his 60s or 70s, the reclusive supreme leader rules by decree from the Taliban movement’s birthplace in southern Kandahar.Haqqani was a close associate of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and served as a negotiator during discussions with US representatives in 2020.ICC prosecutor Khan argued the Taliban was “brutally” repressing resistance through crimes “including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts”.Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement the prosecutor’s actions should put the Taliban’s exclusion of women and girls from public life back on the international agenda. “This is an important moment for Afghan women and girls who have been waiting much too long for justice,” HRW’s women’s rights deputy director, Heather Barr, told AFP, calling for “other efforts to hold the Taliban fully accountable”.The move was praised by Afghan women activists, including Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan former lawmaker and the ousted government’s ex-ambassador to Norway. “It’s a victory,” she told AFP from London. “This also could be counted as (an) important achievement for feminism globally… and particularly for women in Afghanistan.” The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, called the move “a crucial step… for accountability in Afghanistan” on X. – ‘Gender apartheid’ -After sweeping back to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities pledged a softer rule than their first rein from 1996-2001. But they quickly imposed restrictions on women and girls that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”.Edicts in line with their interpretation of Islamic law have squeezed women and girls from public life.They have barred girls from secondary school and women from university, making Afghanistan the only country in the world to impose such bans. Taliban authorities imposed restrictions on women working for non-governmental groups and other employment, with thousands of women losing government jobs — or being paid to stay at home. Beauty salons have been closed and women blocked from visiting public parks, gyms and baths as well as travelling long distances without a male chaperone.A “vice and virtue” law announced last summer ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be “concealed” outside the home. The few remaining women TV presenters wear tight headscarves and face masks in line with a 2022 diktat by Akhundzada that women cover everything but their eyes and hands in public.The international community has condemned the restrictions, which remain a key sticking point in the Taliban authorities’ pursuit of official recognition, which it has not received from any state. The Taliban authorities have dismissed international criticism of their policies, saying all citizens’ rights are provided for under Islamic law.burs-ric/sw/sbk

Iran Nobel winner addresses French parliament while on prison leave

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on Thursday called for an “end” to the Islamic republic and urged human rights to be a precondition of any negotiation with Tehran as she addressed French lawmakers, in a rare encounter with an Iran-based activist.Mohammadi, 52, had been in prison for over three years but was released in December for a limited period on medical leave. Her legal team have warned she could be re-arrested and sent back to jail at any time.She won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her two-decade fight for human rights in the Islamic republic and strongly backed the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the custody death of the Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.”Any negotiations with the Islamic republic that do not take into account the fundamental rights of the Iranian people will only strengthen religious tyranny,” she told the women’s right committees of the French upper house Senate and lower house National Assembly in a joint session, via video link from Tehran.”I believe in the need to end the Islamic Republic,” she added.Mohammadi appeared healthy and as usual in her public appearances defiantly not wearing the headscarf that is obligatory for all women under the Islamic republic’s dress code.She was flanked by pictures of Amini and her two Paris-based twin children, who picked up the Nobel prize in Oslo on her behalf but whom she has not seen for the last decade.Asked about the risks of her participating in this video conference, Mohammadi replied that it was “no difference being on one side or the other of the prison wall”. Her release in December from Evin prison marked the first time Mohammadi, who has spent much of the past decade behind bars, has been free since she was arrested in November 2021.

Palestinian official says hundreds leave Jenin as Israel presses raid

A Palestinian official said hundreds of people began leaving their homes in a flashpoint area of the occupied West Bank on Thursday as Israeli forces pressed a deadly operation.The Israeli military launched the raid in the Jenin area, a hotbed of Palestinian militancy, days into a ceasefire in the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the objective of the operation, dubbed “Iron Wall”, is to “eradicate terrorism” in the area.He linked the operation to a broader strategy of countering Iran “wherever it sends its arms — in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen” and the West Bank.The Israeli government has accused Iran, which supports armed groups across the Middle East, including Hamas in Gaza, of attempting to funnel weapons and funds to militants in the occupied Palestinian territory.”Hundreds of camp residents have begun leaving after the Israeli army, using loudspeakers on drones and military vehicles, ordered them to evacuate the camp,” Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP.The Israeli army said it was “unaware of any evacuation orders for residents in Jenin as of now”.Since it began on Tuesday, the operation has killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded 40 more, according to the Palestinian health ministry.”There are dozens of camp residents who have begun to leave,” Jenin resident Salim Saadi said.”The army is in front of my house. They could enter at any moment.”Israeli forces have also detained several Palestinians from the Jenin area, with an AFP photographer seeing a row of blindfolded men in white jumpsuits being transported out of the West Bank.- Drones -Palestinians had already begun fleeing the Jenin area on foot on Wednesday, with AFPTV images showing a group of men, women and children making their way down a muddy road, the sound of drones buzzing above them clearly audible. The Israeli military said on Thursday it killed two Palestinian militants near Jenin during the night, accusing them of having killed three Israelis.In a statement, the military said that Israeli troops found the two militants barricaded in a house in the village of Burqin.”After an exchange of fire, they were eliminated by the forces,” it said, adding one soldier was wounded in the gunfight.The two men were wanted for the killing of three Israelis and the wounding of six others in a January 6 attack on a bus in the West Bank. The Palestinian health ministry later confirmed the two deaths. Violence has surged across the occupied West Bank since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023, with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 850 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began.During the same period, at least 29 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the territory, according to Israeli official figures.The Jenin raid began after a truce took effect in Gaza on Sunday, halting 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas.The October 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Militants also took 251 people hostage, 91 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the military has said are dead.The attack sparked a devastating war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,200 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.Under the terms of the truce, Gaza militants handed over three Israeli women they had been holding since 2023, in exchange for the release of around 90 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.On Saturday, the two sides are due to carry out a second swap.During first phase of the ceasefire, which is intended to last 42 days, Israeli forces are withdrawing from densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip.The ceasefire followed months of fruitless negotiations mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt.