The report said that one Palestinian prisoner died of a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards, another prisoner met a tragic end due to a chronic health condition that was not treated, while a third screamed for help for hours before he died.
Eyewitnesses recounted the details of the prisoners’ deaths and were confirmed by doctors from Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI), who attended the autopsies, the results of which were shared with the families.
The three men are among at least 12 Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel who have died in Israeli prisons since October 7, according to Physicians for Human Rights. An unknown number of prisoners from the Gaza Strip have also died.
Human rights groups say conditions in overcrowded Israeli prisons have deteriorated sharply since Hamas attacks on Israel. Former Palestinian prisoners described routine beatings, often of entire cells or sections, usually with batons and sometimes with dogs. They said they were denied adequate food and medical care and subjected to psychological and physical abuse.
While international attention and condemnation has focused on the plight of detainees in Gaza, particularly at the notorious Sde Teiman military facility, human rights advocates say there is a deeper, more systemic crisis in Israel’s penal system, the Washington Post reported.
Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, attributes the abuses, in part, to the climate of vengeance in Israel following the October 7 Palestinian attack. “It’s a combination of very negative and violent individual sentiment, support from policymakers and a lack of accountability,” she said.
Shin Bet director Ronen Bar warned in a letter to prison authorities on June 26 that conditions in the country’s prisons could lead to further international legal action.
“Israel is having difficulty repelling the allegations against it, at least some of which are justified,” he wrote in a letter.
The prison system, built to hold 14,500 prisoners, held 21,000, the letter said, in addition to an estimated 2,500 prisoners from Gaza, most of whom were held in military facilities.
Bar concluded that “the prison crisis creates threats to Israel’s national security, its foreign relations, and its ability to achieve the war goals it has set for itself.”
But Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who oversees the prison system, has made no apologies for his “war” on Palestinian prisoners. In a post on X this month in response to Bar, he boasted that he had “significantly reduced” shower time and introduced a “simplified menu.”
He said the simplest solution to prison overcrowding was “execution by shooting someone in the head.”
The report quoted one prisoner as saying that the guards were attacking them “in a crazy way. They used their batons, and kicked us… all over our bodies.”
According to the Palestinian prisoners’ rights organization Addameer, there were a record 9,700 Palestinian security prisoners being held in Israeli prisons in May.
The organization said that about 3,380 prisoners were being held in administrative detention, without charge or trial. The figures do not include prisoners from Gaza; the Israeli authorities have not disclosed the exact number of detainees or where they are being held.
Source: Washington Post
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2024-07-29 16:04:09
