A fertility doctor in Israel, Salem Abu Khaizaran has said Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are smuggling out sperm in order to impregnate their wives.
He claims that the wife of a prisoner serving 32 life sentences gave birth to a boy last August and four other prisoners' wives are pregnant after insemination.
Abu Khaizaran, who works at a fertility clinic in Nablus, said 22 women had undergone insemination using smuggled sperm, but the success rate was low because of the difficulties of keeping sperm fresh during transportation from prisons in Israel to the West Bank.
Forty samples had been smuggled out of prisons, Abu Khaizaran claimed though he declined to explain how.
The Israeli prisons service expressed scepticism over the doctor's account.
One of the pregnant women, Rimah Silawi, 38, told a news conference: "We women are growing old and our chances of having babies in the future is diminishing." Her husband, Osama, is serving four life sentences for the murders of an Israeli and three alleged Palestinian collaborators 22 years ago.
- Guardian
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