Above photo: Palestinian prisoners were brought to Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah in south of Gaza. Firas Al-Shaer.
The Washington Post interviewed Palestinians prisoners and accessed details of autopsies to document three deaths in Israel’s Megiddo Prison.
A new report from The Washington Post published on 29 July details Israel’s torture, starvation, and killing of Palestinians in its prison system in a manner resembling the notorious US prison in Guantanamo Bay.
Based on eyewitness accounts from former prisoners and autopsies carried out by Israeli authorities, The Post reports that “One Palestinian inmate died with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards. Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated. A third screamed for help for hours before dying.”
The three prisoners are among at least 12 Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel to die in Israeli jails since 7 October, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), whose members sat in on the autopsies.
An unknown number of Palestinians abducted by the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip have also died in detention camps outside of Israel’s formal prison system.
Previous reports published by CNN and The New York Times have documented the torture and rape of Palestinian detainees from Gaza at the notorious Sde Teiman camp in the Negev Desert.
However, similar conditions exist in Israel’s formal penal system.
“Violence is pervasive,” Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli rights group HaMoked, told The Post. “It’s very overcrowded. Every prisoner that we’ve met with has lost 30 pounds.”
Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who oversees the prison system, has been unapologetic about his “war” on Palestinian detainees and advocates executing prisoners to alleviate overcrowding.
The Post documented the death of Abdulrahman Bahash, 23, who died at Megiddo Prison.
Bahash, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestinian resistance group, was arrested in connection with armed clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
Israel’s prison service said it could not detail what if any, charges were brought against Bahash.
Two of Bahash’s fellow inmates at Megiddo Prison said he died after guards severely beat him in December.
Guards went at Bahash and several other prisoners “in a crazy way,” one prisoner told The Post. “They used their batons, they kicked us … all over our bodies.”
After the beating, he said, Bahash and others were taken to an area of isolation cells.
“The noise of the screams was all over the section,” the prisoner said.
Bahash died about three weeks later, on 1 January.
The autopsy “revealed signs of traumatic injury to the right chest and left abdomen, causing multiple rib fractures and spleen injury, potentially the result of assault,” read a report from Daniel Solomon, a doctor with PHRI.
Septic shock and respiratory failure following the beating were listed as potential causes of death. The Israeli Prison Service has not provided the official autopsy results to Bahash’s family, nor have they returned his body.
The prison service did not respond to questions about why his body had not been returned to his relatives.
The Post also documented the case of Abdul Rahman al-Maari, 33, who died in Megiddo Prison on 13 November.
The father of four, Maari, had been in prison since February 2023, after he was detained at a temporary Israeli army checkpoint and accused of being affiliated with Hamas and possessing a firearm.
A PHRI report based on the autopsy stated that “Bruises were seen over the left chest, with broken ribs and chest bone underneath … External bruises were also seen on the back, buttocks, left arm and thigh, and right side of the head and neck.”
A fellow prisoner, Khairy Hamad, told The Post that prison guards kicked Maari down a flight of about 15 metal stairs while handcuffed.
Maari remained conscious, but was bleeding from the head. Guards then put him in an isolation cell. Fellow prisoner, 53-year-old lawyer Sariy Khourieh, listened to him wail in pain for hours.
“He was screaming all day and night,” Khourieh said. “I need a doctor,” he remembers Maari repeatedly shouting before falling silent.
The Post also documented the case of 21-year-old, Muhammed al-Sabbar who died after prison authorities denied him medical treatment.
Israeli police detained Sabba for a social media post that allegedly constituted “incitement.”
He has suffered since childhood from Hirschsprung’s disease, which causes painful blockages to the bowels and requires a special diet and medication. Sabbar’s stomach began to swell in October after he was denied his medication and he died on 28 February.
By the time he was rushed to an emergency room, “his condition was already such that the chance of saving him was slim,” a PHRI report concluded.
A policy of slow starvation accompanied the torture and medical neglect. Former prisoners told The Post that they had lost significant weight in jail, often between 30 and 50 pounds.
The food given to prisoners is “barely enough to survive,” said lawyer Aya al-Haj Odeh. Some of his clients said they received as little as three slices of bread a day or a few spoonfuls of rice and were given little water to drink.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Supreme Court in April over what it called a “policy of starvation” in Israeli prisons.
Another detainee, 37-year-old weightlifter Moaziz Abayad, could barely walk after his release. He said he lost 100 pounds while detained without charge in Israel’s Ktzi’ot prison and was raped by a guard using a broom. “It is Guantanamo,” he said.
Some 9,700 Palestinian security detainees were being held captive in Israeli prisons in May, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner rights organization. Some 3,380 were administrative detainees, meaning Israel holds them without charge or trial.
The numbers do not include prisoners from Gaza. The Post reports that Israeli authorities will not reveal exactly how many have been detained or where they are held.