Friday 22 April 2011

Qabaha urges Abbas to release Natsheh from jail

[ 22/04/2011 - 01:59 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Former minister of the prisoners and ex-prisoners Wasfi Qabaha has urged Thursday Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to immediately release Palestinian businessman Nabil Al-Natsheh from PA jails.

According to Qabaha, the persistent detention of Palestinian leaders and prominent figures in the Palestinian community in PA jails contradicts the allegations of Fatah Movement of being keen on ending the Palestinian internal rift, stressing that Natsheh has an honorable record in serving the Palestinian people.
"Indeed, I expected that Abbas would order the release of all Palestinian political prisoners incarcerated in his jails across the West Bank on the Palestinian Prisoner Day, but sad to say it didn’t happen," Qabaha said in a statement he issued on Thursday.

He said that he passed a message of appeal through Palestinian prominent figure and businessman Munib Al-Masri on two occasion urging him to release Natsheh and other Muslim figures in Al-Khalil city, including Nedal Al-Qawasmi, Anas Rasras, Bilal Al-Muhtaseb, Zain Shabaneh, Anwar Haerb, Mohammed Al-Kharoof and others but to no avail.

Natsheh, according to Qabaha, suffers of neck cancer and that his health was badly deteriorating while in solitary confinement where he lives in extremely harsh conditions, underlining that the bad treatment and humiliation he received at the hands of the PA security forces couldn’t be grasped and imagined by the Palestinian people.

"The fact that the detention of Natsheh persisted despite all those appeals and in spite of his clean record indicates that there was indeed a group that doesn’t want to achieve the Palestinian national reconciliation.

In this regard, Qabaha called for the establishment of a wide and comprehensive national campaign to pressure the PA in Ramallah into releasing all political prisoners from jail, stressing that "chivalry and the principle of supporting the oppressed call on us to do so. "We can't accept the humiliation of the symbols of the Palestinian people at any cost," he stressed.

For their part, families of the kidnapped Palestinian citizens in Abbas’s jails didn’t buy the allegations of Fatah that it was striving hard to end the Palestinian internal rift, underscoring that he who indeed want to achieve national reconciliation shouldn’t arrest and torture his fellow Palestinians just because they oppose him politically.

Palestinian legislator MP Mohammed Abu Juhaisha, for his part, condemned the detention of Natsheh, stressing that Natsheh should be honored not denigrated, calling on high-profile and family leaders in Al-Khalil city to join hands in pressuring the PA into freeing him immediately and unconditionally.

Natsheh, who spent years in Israeli occupation jails and was among the 415 Palestinian leaders deported by the Israeli occupation authorities to south Lebanon in 1992, was kidnapped on December 7, 2010 at the hands of elements of the infamous preventive security apparatus in Al-Khalil city. No charges were tabled against him till now.
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