OPT\Israel: Palestinian writer and activist Ahed Tamimi released following weeks of arbitrary detention
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30 November: PEN International welcomes the release of Palestinian writer and activist Ahed Tamimi, and stresses that she should have never been arrested or detained. Her release follows more than three weeks of arbitrary detention in deplorable conditions on unfounded allegations of incitement. PEN International calls for an independent investigation into the assault she was subjected to by Israeli security forces.
PEN International once again calls on the Israeli authorities to end their arbitrary arrests and detention of Palestinians including writers, and to unconditionally release all those arbitrarily detained in Israeli prisons.
Last night Israeli authorities released Ahed Tamimi along with 29 other Palestinian detainees as a part of the temporary truce deal between Israel and Hamas. Following her release, Tamimi told media that if she spoke about her time in detention her father would be killed. Israeli forces arrested her father, Bassem Tamimi, on 29 October while he was travelling to Jordan and took him to an undisclosed location. On 8 November, his family learned that an Israeli court had ordered his administrative detention for six months without charges and without allowing him to communicate with his family or lawyer.
Tamimi also spoke of the abuse and the inhumane detention conditions Palestinians are facing in Israeli prisons, where they are being assaulted and forced to sleep on the ground with limited access to adequate food and drinking water. Earlier in November, PEN International spoke with a lawyer who saw Ahed in prison. The lawyer told PEN International that bruises were visible on Ahed’s body during the visit on 20 November, and that she was subjected to inhumane detention conditions, including limited access to adequate food, drinking water, clothing, and being held in overcrowded prison cells.
UN agencies and international human rights organisations have warned against an alarming rise in settler violence and intimidation of Palestinians, and a spike in arbitrary arrests and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees in the West Bank since October 7th. All these actions negate Israel’s international human rights obligations.
Background
On 6 November, Israeli forces stormed and ransacked the house of prominent Palestinian writer and activist, Ahed Tamini in the occupied West Bank, handcuffed her, and took her to an undisclosed location. Her family told PEN International that soldiers brought her mother, Nariman Tamimi, to another room during the arrest, yet she was able to hear Tamimi scream through the walls, raising concerns that she had been assaulted. A soldier reportedly threatened that Tamimi’s mother and her sons would be next. According to media reports, the Israeli army arrested her on suspicion of ‘inciting violence and terrorist activities’ online. Her family dismissed these allegations, explaining that her social media account had been hacked – a regular occurrence for Tamimi.
Ahed Tamimi is a prominent Palestinian activist and co-author of They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom, in which she reflects on her personal experience and the daily struggles of life under Israeli occupation. She was arrested in December 2017, at the age of 17, following a video of her altercation with Israeli soldiers. She was later sentenced to eight months in prison over charges including ‘aggravated assault.’
For more information about Tamimi’s arrest – which came amid a surge in the use of administrative detention of Palestinians living in the West Bank – please click here .
For more information, please contact Mina Thabet, Head of the MENA Region, at PEN International, email: Mina.Thabet@pen-international.org
