DaysofPal- The health status of Palestinian prisoners recently released from Israeli jails indicates their systematic malnutrition and torture, the Euro-Med for Human Rights said in a statement issued on Saturday.
The Israeli authorities released the detainees and prisoners in four batches, the last of which was on Saturday. The majority appeared to be in a serious state of decline, with each of them losing several kilograms of weight due to what appears to be intentional starvation.
The Euro-Med said that many inmates and detainees required immediate hospital transfers for critical medical examinations. One in particular seemed incapable of recognizing his future after being denied treatment while in custody.
These circumstances demonstrate how Israel has transformed its jails into institutionalized torture facilities for Palestinian detainees and prisoners, including those who were convicted and imprisoned prior to October 7, 2023, the statement reads.
The Euro-Med field team recorded that, in addition to forcing the detainees to wear prison clothes and subjecting them to beatings and violence before and during their loading onto buses, Israeli forces also made many of them shave their heads – a deliberate and degrading measure meant to degrade their morale.
All prisoners and detainees were released under appalling conditions by the Israeli occupation forces, who also stormed their homes and locations designated to receive and celebrate their release. They attacked family gatherings, suppressing them with tear gas and bullets and injuring some people.
According to the testimonies of the released prisoners and detainees that Euro-Med recorded and analyzed, the prison administrations’ violations extended beyond subpar detention conditions and turned into a systematic policy of retaliation against all Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Detainees were subjected to severe torture, intentional starvation, and prolonged solitary confinement as part of punitive measures that ramped up brutally after the events in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to punish them for nothing more than the fact that they were Palestinians. Since October 7, 2023, the conditions inside the prisons have seen an unprecedented deterioration.
According to the testimonies documented by Euro-Med, the Israeli occupation forces also tortured and beat the freed detainees, held them in buses with their hands bound for extended periods of time before releasing them, and subjected them to taunts and profanities that were intended to diminish their human dignity right up until the very end.
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