‘Gov’t arranging family visit to Jordanian teen jailed in Israel’

AMMAN — The Foreign Ministry is working on organising a visit for the family of Jordanian teenager Mohammad Mahdi Saleh who is serving a prison term in Israel, a government official said Thursday. 

Basel Tarawneh, the government coordinator on human rights, said a Foreign Ministry committee following up on Jordanian prisoners abroad met on Wednesday with Saleh’s father and promised him that a visit to his jailed 17-year-old son in Israel would take place “very soon”.

The Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv is intensively following up on the condition of Jordanian prisoners in Israel in general and Saleh’s case in particular, Tarawneh told The Jordan Times.

He added that Israeli authorities have charged Saleh with attempted murder and throwing stones at Israeli forces. 

In previous remarks to The Jordan Times, the media team supporting Jordanian prisoners in Israel, Fedaa, said Saleh was arrested on March 3, 2013 in the West Bank for alleged involvement in clashes with Israeli occupation forces and is being held at Megiddo prison.

According to the Palestinian ministry of prisoners’ affairs, around 5,000 Jordanians and Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including 230 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18.

A total of 125 Jordanians are being held in Israeli  prisons, according to the ministry. 

The government is also following up on the case of Jordanian prisoner Fadi Msallam in Saudi Arabia through the Jordanian embassy in Riyadh and the Saudi embassy in Amman, Tarawneh added.

Meanwhile, the official said he met with families of Salafists who had complained that the Public Security Department (PSD) was not allowing them to visit their detained relatives in Jordan.

A delegation of those Salafist families met with the PSD human rights officer on Wednesday and the matter was resolved, according to Tarawneh.

“In general”, the PSD has has never prevented parents, wives, sons, relatives and friends of jailed Salafists from visiting them he noted, adding that the prosecutor general sometimes prohibits visits to certain hardliners for a short period for the purpose of investigation.