Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel accused after 30 injured in prison battle

Israel accused after 30 injured in prison battle 
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem 
Published: 23 October 2007 
A Palestinian prisoner was in a serious condition in hospital last night
after pitched battles between prison officers and detainees at the remote
Ketziot prison left at least 30 people injured.
The Israeli Prison Service said yesterday that staff used "non lethal
devices" to quell what it said was widespread rioting by mainly Hamas
prisoners after it began a search for contraband, weapons and mobile
phones in the early hours of yesterday.
Palestinian officials responsible for prisoners' welfare said the guards –
believed to be members of the prison service's Nahshon security force
–used teargas and rubber bullets after prisoners reacted to what they said
was an unusually timed search as they slept.
A prison service spokesman said around 1000 rioting inmates had hurled
tins of food, pieces of metal, stones and "anything they could lay their
hands on" at guards. He said the officers had been obliged to respond when
their lives were endangered by the "major disturbance". The prison, in the
Negev Desert, close to the Egyptian border, has been used in recent months
to house Sudanese refugees fleeing over the border from Egypt into Israel,
but only Palestinian prisoners were involved in yesterday's clashes.
The prison service spokesman said an internal investigation had been
launched into the circumstances of the rioting, during which 15 prison
staff were hurt. Of these 14 were treated "on site" and another
hospitalised with "light wounds". Of the 15 injured prisoners, the
spokesman said, 11 were treated at the prison while another four were
hospitalised, one of them seriously injured.
But Issa Ahmad Qaraqi, rapporteur of the Palestinian Legislative Council's
prisoners' committee, claimed the most seriously injured man – whom he
named as Muhammed Asahqar, 26, from Tulkarem – was "clinically dead". He
said that Mr Asahqar was a Fatah prisoner and that the inmates involved
were affiliated with Fatah, Hamas and other factions.
He said the prison authorities had launched a "crazy and provocative
campaign" and that while searches for contraband items were common in
prison, these normally took place during the day when the prisoners were
not sleeping. The inmates had raised the alarm by shouting "Allah Akbar" –
God is great. Mr Qaraqi, added: "We strongly condemn this new crime
against the Palestinian prisoners."
A Palestinian human rights organization quoted by the Maan news agency
said prisoners telephoned it to report that a Nahshon unit had stormed the
Palestinian sections – where prisoners are housed mainly in tents – armed
with clubs, shields, sonic bombs and tear gas canisters.
The prisoners reportedly said the tents were set on fire by the tear gas
canisters and sonic bombs, destroying prisoners' belongings. But the
prison service spokesman insisted last night that the tents had been
burned down by the inmates themselves.
The green-uniformed Nahshon unit is responsible for quelling disturbances
and carrying out searches for contraband goods. The unit also provides
daily armed escorts for hundreds of the prison service's 18,500 inmates –
including Palestinian militants with "blood on their hands" and criminals
regarded as highly dangerous – on their way to interrogations, hospital or
other prisons to which they are being transferred.
It boasts that only once in its 33-year history has a prisoner escaped its
officers. After that incident, in May 2002, the prisoner was recaptured in
three days.
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1000 stupidi hanno preso le legnate che si meritavano