Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) revealed that the Palestinian Authority security services in the occupied West Bank are carrying out barbaric and inhumane acts against Al-Sakhel family in Nablus.
AOHR UK stated that the Preventive Security Forces in the West Bank forced Al-Sakhel family to close their shops to force them to hand over one of the family members, Anwar Al-Sakhl, brother of the political detainee and liberated prisoner Mustafa Al-Sakhel. This is a new repressive act added to the series of collective punishment practices against the families of the Palestinian dissidents.
According to the family, Tarik Al-Sakhel said that the Preventive Security forces forced them to close their “Dream Mall” until Anwar’s handover. He wrote on his social media account: “in my name and in the name of the Dream Mall family, We offer our apologies to our valued customers for the security services closing our branches until handing over my brother Anwar to the Preventive Security Service,” adding, “my brother Mustafa is still under political arrest, after my brother Raed was released yesterday.”
Raed Al-Sakhel, also a released prisoner from the occupation prisons, was arrested by the PA security forces on May 18, 2023. Two days later, they arrested his brother Mustafa for their political activism, and without officially charging them with anything so far.
Al-Sakhel family has a long history of resistance against the Israeli occupation and against the repressive practices of the Palestinian Authority. Their father was a former political detainee for the PA Investigation Services and a former freed prisoner in the occupation prisons. He died of a heart attack in 2013.
The children are Tarik, Raed, Nael, Mustafa, Anwar, and Mohamed. Most of them were arrested by the Israeli occupation and Palestinian security forces.
In some years, four of them were arrested in different occupation prisons, which made it very difficult for their mother to visit them. She was also deprived of her other children, who were banished outside the West Bank for many years.
AOHR UK shed light on the heinous practices of the PA against its own citizens, whom it should be protecting rather than suppressing.
The PA collaborates with the Israeli occupation against its own people, and puts the interests of the occupation above the interests of the original citizens of the lands; thus, leaving Palestinians suffering from both the occupation and the PA.
AOHR UK reiterated its appeals to donor countries, especially the European Union, to stop funding the security services of the Palestinian Authority, especially after exposing the serious crimes committed by these agencies against the Palestinian citizens, which constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and treaties.
Failing to stop supporting them makes the donor countries partners in the crimes committed every day against the Palestinians, for which they should be held accountable.
