Palestinians demand payment of political prisoner wages

A group of former prisoners continued a series of public protests to demand that the Palestinian National Authority pay them the salaries allocated to those incarcerated in Israeli jails and their relatives.

The spokesman for the group of 11 ex-convicts Abdullah Abu Shalbak, said on Monday that the PNA had allegedly cancelled the payments for at least 270 prisoners, some of whom were still in Israeli custody, Efe news reported.

Palestinian law compels the Executive -- led by President Mahmoud Abbas -- to provide financial support to current and former inmates, who are considered political prisoners in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

PNA spokesman Tariq Rashmawi declined to comment on the matter when asked by EFE, although he pointed out that police had recently intervened to break up a protest by the ex-prisoners because they "failed to comply with the rules".

The group, which used to stage its demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah's office, has now chosen to protest at the iconic Yasser Arafat Square in Ramallah, the PNA's administrative capital.

The protesters said that the prisoners who had been affected were all members of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, two Islamist movements that are bitter rivals of the nationalist-secular Fatah party that controls the West Bank.

They claimed that prisoners affiliated with Fatah were still receiving their salaries and that the PNA discriminated against the ones who belonged to the rival movements.

--IANS

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