Three of the nearly two dozen defendants on trial as alleged members of a Jewish terrorist underground have declared a hunger strike in their prison cells, protesting “pressures by the general security sevices.” The three, Dan Beeri, and Barak and Shaul Neer, brothers, protested their treatment as “security prisoners.”
Beeri, 39, a rabbi who converted from Christianity, is originally form France. He faces charges of involvement in the 1980 attack against West Bank Arab Mayors and the plan to blow up the Moslem holy shrines on the Temple Mount.
Barak Neer, 25, of Jerusalem is linked to the Temple Mount plot, and to the gun and grenade attack on the Islamic College in Hebron. His brother, Shaul, is charged in connection with the attack on the Islamic College and the plan to blow up a fleet of Arabowned buses in East Jerusalem.
Beeri, who like other defendants in the trial, walked freely in the Jerusalem District Court corridors, and spoke with reporters, said he declared the hunger strike because as a “security prisoner, ” he and the other defendants were not entitled to leaves, could not receive a deduction of a third of the prison term for good behavior, and could not enjoy certain privileges inside the prison.
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