Abbas calls UN to investigate prisoner’s death

PLO Executive committee member Saeb Erekat Tuesday delivered an official letter from President Mahmoud Abbas to the United Nations that calls to form a committee to investigate the death of prisoner Arafat Jaradat. An autopsy, said Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Qaraqi, revealed that Jaradat died of extreme torture in Israeli custody and did not have a cardiac arrest like Israel claimed. Erekat said in a meeting with the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Robert Serry that the Palestinian leadership's priority is to release the prisoners arrested before 1994 and another 1000 prisoners Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed upon releasing. Erekat said that releasing the prisoners, freezing settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem, and opening closed Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem are all considered an Israeli obligation that must be fulfilled. He held Israel fully responsible for the lives of the prisoners, detainees; including the ones under administrative detention, in addition to those arrested after being released in the prisoners’ swap in 2011.