At the end of January, a total of 183 Palestinian children were imprisoned and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, an increase of 18.8 percent over last month. This includes a total of 20 children between the ages of 14 and 15.
Three in four Palestinian children detained in 2013 by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank endured physical violence during arrest and interrogation.
In January, Israeli soldiers detained Salah S, 16, from Azzun, Qalqilya around 4:30 pm while he was with friends near a road used by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Israeli soldiers held him overnight and transferred him to multiple locations over a 12-hour period, while subjecting him to physical violence and ill-treatment.
Salah was previously arrested in January 2013, then 15 years old, and spent 10 months at Megiddo prison inside Israel.
On January 1, Israeli forces arrested 16 residents from at-Tabaqa village, west of Hebron, in the West Bank, including nine Palestinian children, some as young as 13, on suspicion of stone throwing.
DCI-Palestine research shows that children arrive to Israeli interrogation centers blindfolded, bound and sleep deprived. Unlike their Israeli counterparts, Palestinian children have no right to be accompanied by a parent during an interrogation. In 96 percent of cases documented by DCI-Palestine in 2013, children were questioned alone and rarely informed of their rights, particularly their right against self-incrimination.