The Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Bar Association hosted a special seminar, through which Ihsan Adel the chairman of Law for Palestine highlighted the legal aspect to Israel’s detention of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs. The most recent example of these being the detention of the body of Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Hamid, who died in prison due to cancer, and Israel refused to release his dead body.
The Zoom workshop held on Thursday December 29th 2022 witnessed the participation of the Palestinian minister of Justice Mohammed Shalaldeh, the General Director of Al-Haq Shawan Jabarin, the UN accredited writer and journalist, Abdul Hamid Siam, the Commission of detainees affairs representative Thaer Shreeteh, and the Palestinian journalist Ahmad Farasini who produced a film on Israel withholding the bodies of Palestinians martyrs.
Adel pointed out that some of the Palestinian prisoners should be considered war prisoners, which implies immediate release of bodies, and even before that, once military operations have ended. In this regard, article 120 of III Geneva Convention Relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, and article 130 of IV Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in the time of war, both emphasising that “the detaining authorities shall ensure that prisoners of war who have died in captivity are honourably buried, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged, and that their graves are respected, suitably maintained and marked so as to be found at any time”. In the same context, the United Nations Committee against Torture consider the detention of martyrs as a form of torture and cruel treatment. It also should be considered as a form of collective punishment.
Adel went on to discuss international measures can be taken on the issue, such as submitting individual compliances to the Committee Against Torture, the International Criminal Court, and through the universal jurisdiction, as well as seeking to issue a Security Council resolution, where it would be disconcerting for US or any other state to use its right to obstruct a resolution demanding the return of the martyrs’ bodies, and pushing for an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and mugging opportunistically.
