Prisoner Maher Al-Akhras from Jenin entered his third month of hunger strike protesting his administrative detention in Israeli jails without trial or charge.
Umm Islam Akhras’s wife said in a press statement on Saturday that her husband rejected the occupation court’s decision to freeze his administrative detention in return for suspending his hunger strike and insisted that ending his strike be in exchange for his immediate release.
Umm Islam added that her husband fears that the occupation authorities would tamper with the decision and re-impose the administrative detention as soon as he starts to take medication and food thus nullifying all past steps.
She explained that his health condition has reached a critical stage which calls for his immediate release because every minute he spends behind bars endangers his life. The occupation authorities continue to isolate Akhras and refuse to release him.
In her turn Akhras’s mother said that her son lost a lot of weight as a result of his continuous hunger strike for 62 days and his condition worsened a lot. This was clear in the video that was broadcast on his condition.
His mother expressed her fear that her son had been infected with coronavirus because of his immunodeficiency coinciding with the deterioration of his health and his contact with the jailers among whom many cases are infected with the coronavirus.
Akhras 49 is from Silat al-Dhahr town in Jenin. The Israeli occupation arrested him for the first time in 1989 and his detention continued for seven months. The second time was in 2004 for two years then he was re-arrested in 2009 and remained in administrative detention for 16 months.
He was arrested in 2018 and was held in custody for 11 months. On 27/07/ 2020 he was arrested again and the occupation authorities ordered his administrative detention for four months.
Since the beginning of the strike Akhras has been subjected to repeated transfers as an attempt to exhaust him and discourage him from continuing his strike. At the beginning of his detention he was held in the Hawara detention center then he was transferred to Ofer prison until he was transferred to the Ramla Clinic prison and finally to the Kaplan hospital.
