“The attempts to smuggle cell-phones and banned equipment into jails continue all the time,” said the commander of the Ofer Prison.
Israeli prison guards have thwarted a number of attempts by Arab detainees to smuggle cell-phones to terrorists in the Ofer Prison, located north of Jerusalem, according to media reports.
Arabs hid the phones and “committed petty crimes in an attempt to get themselves caught and sent to prison, where they would pass the phones on to imprisoned terrorists,” said Arutz 7.
“In the screening process, the cell-phones were found inside their body, as they attempted to conceal them from the guards,” reported TPS.
The Israel Prisons Service (IPS) says that cell-phone smuggling into high-security prisons has become a phenomenon. The IPS says that it has stepped up measures over the past year to deal with the matter.
Since the beginning of 2019, there have been 168 attempted cell-phone smuggling operations which have been thwarted, according to the IPS. The detainees tend to be under the age of 18, says the prisons service.
Once the cell-phones are smuggled in, they have been used by terrorists in prison to plan attacks and, in doing so, maintain ties with the terror network to which they had belonged before they were imprisoned by Israel.
“The attempts to smuggle cell-phones and banned equipment into jails continue all the time,” said Rafi Gena, commander of the Ofer Prison, in a statement.
“Thanks to good professional work by our guards, we are able to thwart the attempts to smuggle the phones and prevent the terror activity” that is otherwise planned from within the jail, he added.
Former Balad MK Basel Ghattas served nearly two years in jail for smuggling phones to Palestinian prisoners. He was released in May.
Ghattas did not express remorse, insisting that his aim was simply to help prisoners call their families.
