Ashkar accuses Israel of giving poisonous medicine to Palestinian captives

GAZA, (PIC)-- The spokesman of the PA prisoners and ex-prisoners' affairs ministry Riyadh Al-Ashkar on Wednesday accused the Israeli prisons authority (IPA) of deliberately injecting sick Palestinian prisoners with infected needles, and of giving them poisonous medicines. According to Ashkar, "reliable" information from Palestinian captives (a number of them are medics and aware of the kind of medicine given to them) treated in the Ramle prison hospital affirmed that the IPA was injecting Palestinian patients with needles infected with serious viruses like hepatitis. In this regard, Ashkar called on the World Health Organization (WHO) and other medical groups to immediately conduct thorough investigation of the matter. Few years ago, the head of medicine section in the Israeli health ministry revealed that her government used Palestinian captives in Israeli jails as guinea pigs to test new Israeli medicines. Ashkar cited a number of cases of those Palestinian patients, including prisoner Othman Abu Kharaj, 38, of Jenin city who was injected with a hepatitis-infected needles, among other cases. Around 11,000 Palestinian citizens are still detained in Israeli jails; at least 1,500 of them are suffering of chronic diseases, according to Palestinian records. http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default