Last update - 01:29 10/02/2005
Fahima, celebrating 29th birthday, can't get used to prison
By Yuval Azoulay
Peace activist Tali Fahima probably could not hear her friends and relatives gathered outside the Neve Tirza women's prison in Ramle to celebrate her 29th birthday. Now six months in prison, Fahima has been charged with assisting the enemy at time of war because of her ties to the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Jenin, Zakariya Zubeidi. Her trial will begin in July, and until then she will continue to be held in solitary isolation.
Because Fahima is charged with alleged security crimes, she cannot be in a cell with other convicts and has been defined as "in need of protection" from other inmates who might hurt her. "Moreover" her defense attorney Smadar Ben Natan says, "conversation with any other prisoners is prohibited. If prisoners speak to her, the guards immediately yell at them."
Attorney Ben Natan and Fahima's family also say she is restricted from speaking on the telephone with them. "Its absurd," Ben Natan says. "When she was in administrative detention and interrogated by the Shin Bet, they allowed her to call me. But here, no."
In addition, her family says, Fahima suffers intense cold. "She has two thin blankets and doesn't have enough warm clothes," says Ben Natan.
A bag filled with warm clothes, bought by her mother, Sarah Lahyani, is waiting at home. "I call the prison every day," Lahyani says, "and try to get the clothes through. They say they will call back, but never do."
Fahima's cell has a desk, but no chair high enough to allow her to write comfortably.
The food she is served, she told Ben Natan last week, is greasy and salty.
"She once received a meal soaked in oil and salt. She took a bite and almost vomited. When she asked for something else, they told her: `Buy food at the canteen'. Her financial means do not allow her to feed herself on a daily basis. It's outrageous that the Prisons Service will not feed its inmates properly."
During the argument over the food, her family say, Fahima spoke rudely to one of the guards, and was punished by being denied visits for a month. Her family says she is subjected to intrusive bodily searches when she leaves her cell for court discussions.
"If someone is acquiescent, they can bide the time, but when anyone has any idea about prisoners' and human rights, they are abused," her attorney says.
A spokesman for the Prisons Service, Ofer Lefler, rejects the claims by Fahima's family.
"They are trying to blacken the Prisons Service," he says. "Fahima is held under the same conditions as hundreds of prisoners, tested in thousands of high court petitions, which we won. Fahima's rights are observed. She is the one who verbally abused a guard."
A senior Prisons Service official expresses astonishment at the complaints about food. "One would think that before her arrest she was used to only gourmet food," he says.