PA daily: PA Ministry of Finance negotiates conditions under which salaries are paid to prisoners

     “[The Released Prisoners’] Committee spokesman Omar Afaneh told Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that the Committee had come to an agreement with representatives of the government… according to which salaries would continue to be paid according to the legal criteria that was previously agreed upon, without any changes or additions to the previous agreement... Afaneh noted that the dispute centered on the conditions the [PA] Ministry of Finance recently set on the released prisoners, according to which each released prisoner must present a certificate of good behavior from the Interior Ministry, as well as documents from the Shari’ah court proving that his wife is still the prisoner’s responsibility, and must present five witnesses to confirm that he has indeed been a prisoner, in addition to a legal declaration stating that he has no other source of income. Afaneh said that the released prisoners consider these conditions humiliating, derogatory and intended to offend their honor and expose them to the world and present them as if they were welfare cases rather than fighters... In addition, Afaneh explained that the technical board of the Released Prisoners’ Committee opposed these conditions and rejected them completely at its meeting yesterday [Jan. 26, 2015] with the relevant government officials, represented by [Director] Issa Karake of the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Affairs, government Secretary-General Ali Abu Diyak, Chairman of the Prisoners’ Club Qadura Fares and Mundhir Ramadan of the Ministry of Finance.”