'Israel using Palestinians as guinea pigs'

The Sawasya Center for Human Rights has stated that the Israel is using Palestinians held in its detention centers as guinea pigs to test the effectiveness of new drugs manufactured by its health industry.

According to the Palestinian Information Center, the Cairo-based rights center cited evidence that Israeli interrogators gave prisoner Zuhair al-Iskafi and several other Palestinian inmates an injection which resulted in complete loss of their hair on the head and body -- a medical condition referred to as alopecia universalis.

The Sawasya Center called on human rights organizations and the World Health Organization to dispatch a delegation of medical experts to Israel to examine Palestinian detainees allegedly subjected to these tests.

The issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is routinely glossed over by the international community. Thousands of Palestinians are still held in flagrant breach of international law and their basic human rights.

A report prepared by the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs states that 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967 and almost 50,000 since the second uprising of 2000.

Today, 9,850 are being held in about 30 prisons and detention centers in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Of these, 105 are women and 359 are children.

All are held either by the military or in Israeli prisons, and many are in administrative detention without trial or a judicial decree.

(Source: Press TV)

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