The Israeli administration is preventing Palestinian Prisoner Society lawyers from meeting with political prisoners in Etzion. The decision to forbid legal visits for a week in the Israeli prison was issued without explanation.
Attorney Sheikh has worked for the PPS since the beginning of the second uprising in 2000. He is charged with representing the political prisoners from the Bethlehem and Hebron districts held in Etzion and has never been banned from the prison.
His main task is to follow-up on the status of the people inside: the conditions of their detention and human rights violations, including lack of necessary medical care. The PPS lawyers are often the only link between Palestinian prisoners and their families.
Attorney Sheikh also sends the necessary foodstuffs, clothing and basic supplies for prisoners when the Israeli administration allows it. He is also depended upon to transfer the messages of the suffering inside the prisons.
The PPS is concerned that human rights violations have increased during this blackout period in which there is no chance at monitoring “all kinds of oppression, torture and lack of minimum humanitarian conditions.”
Etzion is located inside the settlement bloc of the same name built on southern Bethlehem lands.