The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) has accused the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) of continuing to hold on to bodies of 12 Palestinian prisoners who died in its jails.
One of those prisoners is martyr Anees Dawla whose body has been held since 1980. He is among 251 martyrs who have been buried in a graveyard locally known as “the cemetery of numbers.”
In addition the IOA still refuses to reveal the fate and whereabouts of 68 missing persons according to PPS.
Since October 2015 bodies of over 250 Palestinian martyrs had been seized and kept by the IOA. However most of them were handed over to their families.
Since Israeli forces occupied the West Bank in 1967 IOA has retained the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians who either died in prison or were killed during security incidents.
IOA keeps some martyrs in freezers for years at the National Center of Forensic Medicine or bury them in graves with no headstones in what Palestinians call “the cemetery of numbers” according to human rights groups.
