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by IMEMC News & Agencies

Israeli authorities recently issued administrative detention orders, without charge or trial, against nine Palestinian minor prisoners, according to the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs (CPA).

Heba Masalha, a CPA attorney, identified the nine prisoners as Huthaifa Jabarin, Mahmoud Abu-Ali, Ashraf Zaid, Mahmoud Shweki, Jamal Dari, Nasim Hawarin, Abdul-Ghani Hammad, Majd Saadi, and Adnan al-Azayzeh.

Meanwhile, Masalha said prisoner 18-year-old Mahmoud Odeh from Tulkarm, who was recently detained by Israeli forces, was brutally tortured in Israeli jails.

Odeh told Masalha that during several investigation sessions, investigators used cigarettes to burn holes through his skin and force him to confess.

Administrative detention is the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial and on the basis of secret evidence for up to six month periods, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military courts.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (PPSN), “Israel’s use of administrative detention violates international law; such detention is allowed only in individual circumstances that are exceptionally compelling for “imperative reasons of security.”

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel of using administrative detention routinely as a form of collective punishment against Palestinians.

Israel frequently uses administrative detention when it fails to obtain confessions in interrogations of Palestinian detainees.