RAMALLAH, Friday, February 10, 2023 (WAFA) – A Palestinian father-of-nine dawn Friday died in Israeli custody due to deliberate medical negligence, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
PPS said in a press statement that Ahmad Abu Ali, 48, a resident of the southern West Bank city of Yatta, near Hebron, has died in the Israeli in Soroka Hospital due to Israel's systematic medical negligence.
Detained since 2012, Abu Ali, was sentenced to 12 years in imprisonment. He only had two years left before his release. Throughout his imprisonment years, he suffered from several diseases, chronic heart problems, and diabetes.
According to the PPS, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), which administers prisons and detention facilities, deliberately delayed providing him with the necessary treatment, conducting medical examinations, and following up on his health status, which led to his death today.
During his imprisonment, Abu Ali was denied the chance to attend the funeral processions of his parents.
PPS held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for Abu Ali’s death and for the fate of all the sick and wounded prisoners inside Israeli jails, saying that what happened with Abu Ali is yet another crime to be added to a long track record of crimes committed by the occupation with systematic tools.
PPS slammed the crime of deliberate medical negligence as the most prominent and dangerous of these tools, and it was the main reason behind the death of many prisoners during the past few years.
With the death of prisoner Ahmad Abu Ali, the number of prisoners who died in imprisonment rises to 235 since 1967, 75 of whom were killed by deliberate medical negligence, noting that dozens of former prisoners who died as a result of diseases they were inflicted with while imprisoned.
According to PPS statistics, the number of sick prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons has reached more than 600, and their health conditions have been diagnosed, including 24 suffering from cancer and tumors of various degrees.
According to the latest figures from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently 4,700 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 150 children and 34 females.
This number includes 835 Palestinians placed under “administrative detention”, that allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.
Mass arrest of Palestinians is nothing new. According to a 2017 report by Addameer, over the past 50 years, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained by Israel, this figure is now believed to be closer to 1 million. This means that about 40% of Palestinian men and boys living under military occupation have been deprived of their freedom. Almost every Palestinian family has suffered the imprisonment of a loved one.
K.F.
