Detention Without Charge, Isolation Without Explanation: The Case of Journalist Bushra al-Tawil
Israeli prison authorities have moved Palestinian journalist Bushra al-Tawil, 33, into isolation at Ramla prison. She has scabies. Her family has no direct information about her condition.
Word reached her mother in Ramallah through a freed prisoner. Whenever a woman is released from Damon prison, Bushra’s mother calls her, hoping for news of her daughter. She did the same when another woman walked free. This time, the woman told her Bushra was no longer in Damon.
Then came a long, hard search. It took call after call, and follow-up with HaMoked, before her mother learned that Bushra had been moved to isolation in Ramla. The family is trying to find out why she was transferred, and whether she is well.
Israeli occupation forces arrested Bushra on Feb. 5. She spent a week in the al-Maskobiya interrogation center before she and a group of other women prisoners were taken to Damon on Feb. 12. Occupation authorities then placed her in administrative detention under a four-month order and renewed it for a second four-month term. Three months of that term have passed, and the order is due to expire Oct. 12.
“Bushra was put in isolation several times while she was in Damon,” her mother told the Prisoners’ Media Office. “The harshest was last April, when she spent 14 days in solitary. Like the rest of the women prisoners, she was also subjected to systematic raids and crackdowns. The last confirmation that she was in Damon came during her lawyer’s visit on Aug. 23.
“After that visit, women prisoners were freed from Damon. They told me they hadn’t seen Bushra and that she was no longer there. I rushed to contact HaMoked, which confirmed she had been moved to Ramla prison.”
The family asked for a lawyer’s visit right away. The Israel Prison Service has not responded. Prisoner advocacy groups are following her case, but the family still has no firsthand account of her conditions inside Ramla.
Bushra had a skin rash for months, her mother said. Prison authorities gave her nothing but an ointment to ease the pain, never the treatment she needed. At first, her mother was told it was an “allergy.” It wasn’t. Bushra had never had an allergy of any kind, and the rash turned out to be scabies.
Freed women prisoners said she has also grown visibly thinner. Still, her mother said, Bushra’s spirits are high and her will unbroken, however harsh the conditions.
Bushra is one of five women journalists held in Israeli occupation prisons. Occupation authorities keep going after her for her journalism and have arrested her for it several times before. Counting this detention, she has spent about five years behind bars.
Her mother is waiting on two releases: her daughter’s and her husband’s. Sheikh Jamal al-Tawil is being held in administrative detention at Nafha prison, where his order has been renewed twice, most recently for six months. It is due to end Oct. 24.
She hopes they will walk free together.
