Palestinian detainee killed in Israeli jail: Prisoners’ affairs groups

By Ahmed Asmar

ANKARA (AA) - Palestinian prisoners' affairs groups accused Israel on Monday of killing a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail.

The Israeli Prison Services said it will look into the circumstances of the detainee's death, which took place in Meggido prison.

In a joint statement cited by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israel assassinated detainee Abdul Rahman Bassem Al-Bahsh, 23, from the city of Nablus.

The statement said Al-Bahsh was detained on May 31, 2022 and sentenced to 35 months.

It added that the number of Palestinians who have died in Israeli prisons since Oct. 7 has risen to seven.

Qaddoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, said the seven are the only ones known so far, noting "there are other slain prisoners from the Gaza Strip, detainees that no one knows about yet."

On Dec. 26, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said Israel is obligated to disclose the whereabouts of the nearly 3,000 Palestinian civilians it has kidnapped from homes and shelter centers in Gaza. It urged the international community to put pressure on Tel Aviv to end its policy of enforced disappearance.

It said the Israeli army had been detaining hundreds of Palestinians in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, including dozens of women who were taken to Yarmouk Stadium, where they had their veils removed and were searched by soldiers. Many also endured explicit abuse, beatings and harassment.

It added that Palestinian males, including children as young as 10 years old and elderly people over the age of 70, “were forced to take off all of their clothes except their underwear and line up in a humiliating manner in front of the women detained in the same stadium.”