Middle East Monitor / November 26, 2019
Palestinian prisoner Sami Abu Diak was pronounced dead this morning after suffering from serious illness while in Israeli jails.
The PLO’s Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission (PPC) said that Abu Diak, 37, from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, died in the Israeli hospital Asaf Harofeh.
According to the PPC, he died due to the “deliberate and systematic clinical killings by the Israeli Prison Services (IPS).”
Prior to his death, Israel, the PPC said, had rejected several appeals to release him on humanitarian grounds or at least to allow him to receive proper treatment in Israeli hospitals.
The PPC said that the IPS closed all the sections in prisons to avoid riots or protests breaking out among Palestinian prisoners. Detainees banged on doors.
Detained on 17 July 2002, Abu Diak was sentenced to three life terms plus 30 years. He spent 17 years in jail before his death.
He was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in September 2015 and his condition deteriorated very quickly and he has been forced to use a wheelchair as a result.
Abu Diak died “due to physical and psychological torture, medical negligence and other violations”, the PPC said, laying the blame at Israel’s door.
In his final message, the 37-year-old had said: “I want to spend my last days and hours beside my mother and my loved ones, and I want to die in her arms.”
“I do not want to die while my hands and feet are cuffed and in front of a jailer who loves death and nurtures and delights in our pain and suffering.”
His death brings to 221 the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons since 1967.
According to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group, there are currently 5,250 prisoners in Israeli jails, including 205 children and 44 women.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says there have been approximately one million Palestinians arrests since 1948.
