Ukrainian citizen Iryna Polischuk (married name Sarahme) has said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry gave her insufficient help during the almost nine years of imprisonment in an Israeli prison, and that she will ask for residency permit in Palestine.
As reported, the 34-year-old Ukrainian was released on October 18, 2011, and was among the 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas in 2006. Her husband is behind bars as he was sentenced to several life terms.
"Our then ambassador [during her imprisonment] came [to the prison] just once. He said that I had comfortable conditions, like in a hotel, I had money for everything necessary, and lawyers visited me three days a month. [The minister] said: ‘You’re a real terrorist, the Palestinians adore you,’ and then he was gone," she said in the interview published in the Sehodnya newspaper on Wednesday.
She also said that she was Ukrainian citizen and recently had decided to ask the Palestinian president to grant her residency permit.
"I’m Ukrainian citizen. I was born in Mykolaiv in 1977 and I’ve got both a Ukrainian internal and a Ukrainian foreign passport, which was prolonged by [my] mother via the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel. I grew up and studied in Mykolaiv, I’m a seamstress by profession. The other day I applied to the Palestinian president to grant me residency permit," she said.
Ukrainian woman called her release a miracle, as "the exchange was to be just for Palestinians."
Polischuk also said she intends to achieve the release of her husband, Palestinian Ibrahim Sarahme.
"I won’t abandon my husband. And I can help him if [I] write an appeal to the Palestinian president in order to include him on the list of those who are to be released," she said.
In 2002 Iryna Polischuk was sentenced to 20 years in prison for assisting in a terrorist attack in Rishon LeZion near Tel Aviv in May 2002, which killed two people and injured 40. She was accused of delivering a 17-year-old suicide bomber to the site of the attack in May 2002. Polischuk denied the accusation.
