Abdul Rahman al-Bahsh, a 23-year-old who was from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, had earlier on Monday been announced as the latest Palestinian prisoner to die.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society and the PA Commission for Detainees said that the 23-year-old has been detained since May 31, 2022, and had been sentenced to 35 months in prison.
“He is the first imprisoned martyr of 2024, and the seventh since October 7 that we have been able to verify,” they said in a statement.
Al-Bahsh is also the fourth detainee to die in Megiddo – proof, they said, that “there is nothing stopping Israel from carrying out more assassinations against detainees in its prisons, in addition to the systematic torture and abuse, which aims to kill them directly”.
Hamas has described the death of al-Bahsh in an Israeli jail as an “assassination”.
“This crime comes amid reports of summary executions, barbaric torture and inhumane conditions that our heroic prisoners are facing,” Hamas official Zaher Jabarin said in a statement, citing testimonies from newly released detainees.
Jabarin also slammed the “silence” of international agencies and rights groups towards the mistreatment Palestinians are facing in Israeli custody.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said that “many disturbing question marks are accumulating” after seven Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli prisons since October 7.
Quoted by the Israeli Ynet website, the organisation said that there “is a lot of evidence of cases of violence and cruel and humiliating treatment by prison guards”.
The rights group called for an investigation into the causes of the prisoners’ deaths.
