The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission today received a memorandum charging mistreatment of more than 200 Jewish political prisoners in several Palestine prisons and concentration camps.
The memorandum stated that these political suspects were imprisoned without trial, hearing or investigation, by decision of the police authorities, and were submitted to treatment in many cases worse than that imposed on criminal inmates in the same prisons. The situation in a series of cases was so unbearable, the petition said, that even the strictly censored Palestinian press showed moments of bitterness.
Distress among the prisoners was declared to have resulted in a hunger strike in the Sarafend concentration camp at the end of July. The strike lasted six days and ended after many of the prisoners were transported to the Government hospital and forcibly fed it was stated. Physical punishment was common the memorandum asserted. Cases were cited in which prisoners were stripped and kept with their eyes plastered for several days hung up with their hands and legs tied together and stretched in opposite directions. Other alleged brutalities were listed.
The memorandum concluded with an appeal to the Mandates Commission to use its powers to end the “manslaughter” and “tortures” in Palestine.
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