New Straits Times

Children fathered from inside prison walls

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KHAN YUNIS: Cradling her newborn son in a thick white blanket on the patio of her Gaza home, Iman al-Qudra knows it will be years before her baby boy, Mujahid, meets his father.

Her husband Mohammad alQudra has been imprisoned in Israel since 2014, and for Iman to get pregnant his sperm had to be smuggled out of jail to be used in an in-vitro fertilisat­ion (IVF) programme.

Iman is one of several Palestinia­n women in the Israeliblo­ckaded Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank who, in recent years, have turned to IVF using sperm from an imprisoned husband.

It is a complex endeavour — Israeli prison officials voiced doubt it was even possible — and success is not guaranteed.

For the Qudras, another Palestinia­n, who was being freed from the same prison in southern Israel

where Mohammad is held, had to first agree to smuggle out the semen on the day of his release. He then had to swiftly get it past the Gaza Strip crossing, tightly controlled by Israel.

Next came Iman’s IVF treatment, and then an anxious wait to see if it had worked.

A specialist in reproducti­ve health at the University Hospital of Toulouse, Louis Bujan, told AFP it was “plausible” for sperm to remain viable during such a journey, regardless of refrigerat­ion conditions.

“It all depends on the quality of the sperm from the start,” said

Bujan, adding that semen can be held in a container for more than 24 hours and remain viable.

After three attempts, Iman conceived in 2020, five years after last being given permission to see her husband during a prison visit.

“I was afraid of being too old for another pregnancy by the time my husband was released,” she said, surrounded by her three daughters, all conceived before Mohammad’s imprisonme­nt.

“I wanted a boy” which an IVF treatment allowed her to choose, she told AFP.

Specialist Abdelkarim al-Hindawi performed the procedure in

Gaza City, where he said he has carried out several fertilisat­ions of prisoners’ wives.

“Usually the sperm arrives hidden inside a pen or a small bottle, passed (secretly) during visits,” or sneaked out by a freed cellmate.

“It has to be here within 12 hours, or it will no longer be viable,” he said, adding that the semen is then frozen for preservati­on at the clinic.

Each attempt costs US$2,000, a huge sum in poverty-ridden Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 when Hamas Islamists took power in the territory.

 ?? AFP PIC ?? Iman, 30, wife of Palestinia­n prisoner in an Israeli jail Mohammad al-Qudra, holds their newborn boy, conceived with smuggled sperm, flanked by their three daughters at the family home in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
AFP PIC Iman, 30, wife of Palestinia­n prisoner in an Israeli jail Mohammad al-Qudra, holds their newborn boy, conceived with smuggled sperm, flanked by their three daughters at the family home in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

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