Palestinian prisoner from Gaza dies in Israeli jail after medical negligence: Rights groups

Two Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups say an elderly Palestinian prisoner from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip has recently died from heart problems and medical negligence at a detention center in the central part of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories.

The Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) announced in a joint statement on Saturday that 65-year-old Nasr Salem Said Ziyara passed away at the maximum-security Ayalon Prison, formerly known as Ramla Prison, on August 16.

The statement added that Ziyara was detained along with his son Jihad, 37, who is currently being held at Negev Prison on the southern side of the occupied lands, from their house in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City on December 29.

The two independent and non-governmental rights organizations noted that Ziyara and his son experienced prolonged maltreatment during interrogation inside their home before being detained.

Prisoners in Ramla Prison confirmed that Ziyara had been transferred to the detention facility just a week before his death, adding that he was suffering from burns in the lower part of his body and was unable to walk.

According to the prisoner’s family, Ziyara suffered from diabetes and heart problems that were exacerbated because of Israeli medical negligence and difficult detention conditions. He was not suffering from any burns to his body at the time of his arrest.

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Ziyara’s death raises the number of prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7 last year to 24, the statement added.

The statement placed full responsibility for Ziyara’s death on Israeli authorities and called on the international human rights community to hold the occupying Tel Aviv regime accountable for its crimes against Palestinian detainees.

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.

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