Barghouthi on hunger strike until transfer to Jordan

A Jordanian citizen imprisoned in Israel will not end his hunger strike until he transferred to a Jordanian prison, a lawyer said Thursday. Abdallah Barghouthi, who was transferred to the Haemek Medical Center in Afula in northern Israel, has been on hunger strike since May 2. Hanan al-Khatib, a lawyer for the PA Detainee Affairs Ministry, visited Barghouthi and said he was chained to his hospital bed by his legs and his left hand. Prison guards have turned Barghouthi's hospital room "into a kitchen" to harass him, al-Khatib said. They also provoke him by having noisy gatherings in his room. Barghouthi told the lawyer he felt isolated from the world as he is not allowed to receive newspapers or listen to news bulletins. In May, Barghouthi, 41, was taken to the al-Jalameh prison for four days where he was interrogated about his hunger strike, a lawyer from the Addameer prisoner rights organization said. A Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, Barghouthi is demanding his release from Israeli prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in a Jordanian jail, under the Wadi Araba agreement between Jordan and Israel. Barghouthi is also demanding that Israel disclose the whereabouts of 20 missing Jordanian prisoners, he told Addameer lawyer Faris Ziyad. Further, he is calling on Israel to remove the bodies of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody from nameless graves. Barghouthi is serving 67 life terms, the highest sentence ever handed down by an Israeli military court. He has been detained since March 2003. A Hamas leader, Barghouthi was convicted of involvement in multiple attacks in Israel.