Young Palestinian detainee held without charge dies in Israeli custody

Palestinian prisoner monitoring groups say 22-year-old Ahmed Hatem Muhammad Khdeirat has died in Israeli custody after being held without charge or trial for five months.

Prisoners’ affairs groups reported on Wednesday that Khdeirat, detained at Ramon Prison in the southern part of the Israeli-occupied territories, died following a rapid deterioration in his health.

In a joint statement, the Commissioner of Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) confirmed the young Palestinian man's death.

"The Commission and the Club indicated that the crime of Khdeirat's martyrdom adds to the list of crimes carried out by the occupation regime, its policy of killing prisoners and detainees, as part of the ongoing war of extermination against the Palestinian people," the statement read.  

Khdeirat, who hailed from the town of ad-Dhahiriya in al-Khalil, southern occupied West Bank, died at  Soroka Medical Center, the statement added.

The young man has been held under administrative detention since May 2024. The PPS had warned, in August, of a “serious deterioration” in Khdeirat’s health. 

Palestinian rights groups said Khdeirat spent most of his detention in the notorious Negev prison, where he was held in "harsh, inhumane conditions."

Israel's Negev prison has been compared by several rights groups to the notorious US facilities at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were tortured and abused.

Khdeirat, who was already suffering from chronic diabetes, experienced further health complications in detention, with his weight dropping to around 40 kilograms.

The prisoner groups reported that his health “seriously deteriorated” after he contracted scabies, which caused severe itching and frequent muscle cramps.

These symptoms, combined with intense hunger pangs and dangerously low blood sugar linked to his chronic condition, left him unable to move.

His lawyer testified that he had been confined to his bed and unable to stand for two months.

Khdeirat became the 78th identified Palestinian prisoner to die in Israeli custody since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip in October 2023.

The deaths have occurred amid widespread reports of Israeli torture, physical abuse, sexual assault, medical neglect, and starvation of detainees.

While the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons has long been documented by human rights organizations, the abuses have sharply escalated since the onset of the genocidal war.

Currently, an estimated 11,100 Palestinian prisoners are being held across 23 Israeli prisons, detention facilities and interrogation centers.

This figure excludes unaccounted detainees held in Israeli military camps, primarily Palestinians abducted from Gaza.

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The PPS said in a statement that Israel was holding the highest number of detainees since the second Intifada in 2000.

“According to what was announced by the Occupation Prison Administration as of October, the number of sentenced prisoners exceeded 1,460 prisoners,” the statement read.

“The number of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment and those against whom indictments have been filed in preparation for issuing life sentences is about 350 prisoners, of whom 303 are sentenced, and 40 are indicted for issuing life sentences,” it added.

To date, at least 53 women and more than 400 child prisoners have been detained in Ofer and Megiddo prisons in the occupied territories.

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