LONDON: At least 89 Palestinian prisoners, mostly from Gaza, have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
Marwan Herzallah, from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, was the latest prisoner confirmed dead on Saturday. He had been arrested in January on alleged charges of incitement and had lost a leg due to a shooting by Israeli forces in the 1990s.
Fifty-two detainees from the Gaza Strip have died, and the fate of dozens remains unknown, according to the Wafa news agency.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of a systematic policy of torture, starvation, medical neglect, sexual assault and various other abuses against prisoners.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, said last week that “since the onset of the genocide (in Gaza), the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty.”
Since then, about 18,500 Palestinians have been detained across the occupied Palestinian territory, including at least 1,500 children, according to Albanese. Many of them were released later. As of March, the Ramallah-based rights group Addameer reported that there are 9,500 people detained in Israel.
The total number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli jails since 1967 has reached 326, with Israeli authorities holding the bodies of 97.
