A Palestinian in his early 20s, who had been held in an Israeli detention center for over 14 months under the so-called administrative detention, has died in custody due to deliberate medical negligence, Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups say.
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) announced in a joint statement on Sunday that Mohammad Yassin Khalil Jabr, 22, passed away the previous day.
The statement added that Jaber, from the Dheisheh refugee camp located just south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, “had been held under administrative detention since December 11, 2023, and was being held at the Negev desert prison in the southern Israeli-occupied territories before his martyrdom.”
Even though the statement did not provide any detail about the circumstances surrounding his death, it did mention that Jabr had a severe wound in his abdomen a year and a half before his arrest.
“Part of his intestines was removed at that time, and he was arrested while in need of intensive medical care,” the statement noted.
With the death of Jabr, the number of administrative detainees who have died in Israeli prisons since the beginning of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023 rose to six.
The total number of identified deaths among prisoners and detainees since the start of the bloody onslaught surged to 56 as well.
Neither the administrative detainees, who include women and children, nor their lawyers are allowed to see the “secret evidence” that Israeli forces say form the basis for their arrests.
These people have been arrested by the military for renewable periods of time, meaning the arrest duration is indefinite and could last for many years. The administrative detainees include 41 children and 12 women, according to the Addameer prisoner support association.
Israel keeps Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their illegal detention.
Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.
According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.