Mohannad, artist and former political prisoner

"After I was released I became very detached, I didn't want to see people or speak to them, I wasn't used to the sound of my own voice. So I started working...painting a mural near the university, and this is how I got to know my wife. She deals with the issues I face quite well." - Mohannad, artist and
former political prisoner, Ramallah, Palestine

Mohannad grew up in a refugee camp near Beit Lahm (Bethelhem), Palestine. In 2004, at the height of the Second Intifada, Mohannad's family home was raided in the middle of the night by the Israeli army. Scared for his life, he hid upstairs while Israeli soldiers were shooting live ammunition at the door and windows, and throwing sound grenades inside the home, with his family inside. The soldiers detained his mother at gunpoint, brought her upstairs where Mohannad was hiding, and forced her to plead with her son to come out. Mohannad was violently detained, blindfolded, shackled, marched through the camp, and thrown on floor of an army jeep where he was beaten and kicked by the soldiers. He described being disoriented and hearing the fading screams of his mother, family members and neighbors, who were helpless to do anything, as he was taken away. 

He was taken to Moscovia, the Israeli interrogation center in Jerusalem, where he was immediately placed into interrogation which lasted for 4 straight months. He was tied by his hands and legs to a chair bolted to the ground, and interrogated in 8 hour shifts, while being deprived of sleep for 72 hours at a time, over and over again. He learned to keep track of time based on the soldiers changing shifts. During interrogation, they would scream loudly into his ear, violently shake his head, beat him, and when he started to fall asleep they would pour ice cold water on him and then turn on the air conditioning as cold as possible. 

When not being interrogated, he was held in solitary confinement, in a 3x2 meter cell with a small hole in the floor for a bathroom. Bright fluorescent lights were kept on 24 hours a day, the walls were intentionally jagged so you cannot lean on them, he was fed once a day...4 olives, 2 pieces of bread, and a spoon of yogurt. Several times the bathroom hole overflowed, and he was forced to sit in raw sewage for days. Another time the soldiers found a small piece of tissue he had saved, and as punishment he was bound by his hands and legs and left on the floor for more than a day, without food or water, having to urinate on himself. Believing he would die in solitary confinement, Mohannad went on hunger strike, painfully accepting that this could also result in his death. He asked for salt and water only, and by the 3rd day of hunger strike he lost consciousness. He woke up in a clinic, and said he will not stop the hunger strike unless he is taken out of solitary confinement. The army transferred him to a prison in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where he saw sunlight again for the first time. He was held there for several more years until he was finally released. During the entire period, Mohannad was never told what he was charged with, but suspects it was related to painting political graffiti. 

Mohannad was held under what is termed "administrative detention", a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on "secret information" without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 2000, over 90,000 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned or held in administrative detention, and over 90% of prisoners are tortured physically and psychologically. Children are not immune, since 2000 close to 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained, including as young as 5 years old, and subjected to the same interrogation tactics and horrid conditions as adults, and often become victims of sexual abuse while in detention. Detaining children in this manner violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israel also strategically targets university students when they are in their periods of final exams, so they cannot graduate - it takes the average Palestinian student 8 to 10 years to graduate college, as was the case with Mohannad. 

Mohannad now works with a Palestinian prisoner's human rights and support group, helping other prisoners and creating awareness. Unfortunately Mohannad's experience is all too common, and it takes great courage on his part to open up and revisit this experience with strangers. We noticed he was wearing a wedding ring so we asked about it and how is his life now, and he shared with us that he met his wife while attempting to heal his trauma by painting for an art exhibit.