Detained Palestinian professors lives in danger
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 4/27/2006

Palestinian human rights groups on today warned that the lives of two professors detained in Israeli jails in connection with their non-violent opposition to the Israeli occupation were in danger as a result of deliberate medical negligence by the Israeli prison authorities.

The two professor are Isam al-Ashgar, professor of Physics at the Najah National University in Nablus, who is being interned at the notorious Ofer prison near Ramallah, and the Muhammed Ghazal, an engineering professor at the same university, who is detained without charge or trial at a desert concentration camp near the Egyptian borders.

A spokesman for the Nablus-based International Solidarity Organization, a human rights group monitoring Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories, said Ashgar was complaining of severe pains in the head and chest and was being denied medical treatment by the Israeli prison physician.

The Ashgar family said the 50-year-old professor was given no more than analgesics, adding that the Israeli authorities were refusing to transfer him to a medical facility for a real checkup.

Similarly, Professor Ghazal reportedly nearly lost sight in one of his eyes while sight in the other eye was deteriorating.

The two professors' families are demanding that they be set free immediately as they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

Israel detains over a thousand Palestinians without charge or trial.

In a related development, a Palestinian political detainee died Tuesday night while in detention in an Israeli prison. The prisoner has been identified as Suleiman Muhammed Mahmoud Darayjeh, from the town of al-Taybeh in 1948-Palestine. The Palestinian minister for political prisoners' affairs, Wasfi Kabaha, accused the Israeli occupation authorities of responsibility for the death of Darayjeh. He pointed out that Darayjeh, 23, had been ill for a long time and that the Israeli prison authorities were refusing to give medical care. The Israeli prison authorities said they were investigating the 'incident'.

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