Israeli official: Israel imprisons 7 Sudanese refugees
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
JERUSALEM, Aug 15, 2004 (AP) — Seven Sudanese refugees are in an Israel military prison after fleeing their war-torn country on foot, military officials said Sunday.
The Jerusalem Post daily reported that the refugees walked all the way from Sudan ‘s Darfur region, which has been torn by a civil war between blacks and Muslims. That is a hike of at least 1,600 kilometers.
Five of the refugees arrived in Israel nearly two months ago and the other two were detained last week.
Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the men were taken into custody after illegally crossing the Egyptian border and were handed over to the Israeli Prisons Service.
Prisons Service officials denied that. “They absolutely have not been transferred over to the Prisons Service,” said spokesman Ian Domnitz. “They are still under the direction of the IDF (military).”
The officials said the seven are being held at the Ketziot prison, a military detention center in Israel’s southern desert.
In interviews in The Jerusalem Post, the prisoners complained of substandard treatment in the Israeli prisons.
Military officials rejected the statements, saying that the Sudanese have received the same treatment as other detainees. However, the military didn’t respond immediately to an AP request for interviews with the Sudanese.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has intervened in the matter on a humanitarian basis, an official said.
“They don’t fall under the Geneva Conventions because their arrest had nothing to do with the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” said Simone Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Jerusalem.
Schorno said that his organization is helping the detainees to establish contacts with their families in Sudan and is working with the Israeli authorities to prevent them from being deported.
“We remind the Israeli authorities that anyone who has fled their country of origin should not be send back without their consent.” Schorno told the Associated Press. “Our concern is that they might be in danger if they return to their country of origin.”
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict in Sudan , more than a million have been forced from their homes and more than two million are in urgent need of aid, according to the U.N., which has called Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.