RAMALLAH: On Monday night 29-year-old Ashraf Abu Dhra' died five months after being released from Israel's Ramleh prison. Addameer Prisoner Support Network released a statement on Tuesday condemning Israeli Prison Services, arguing that his death was ultimately the result of “medical negligence" during his six-and-a-half year imprisonment. Abu Dhra' was originally arrested in his Hebron village in May 2006. Addameer says that he was held in isolation for almost the entirety of his sentence, and was rarely allowed to see an independent physician, despite an array of medical problems that predated his arrest. In 2008, Physicians for Human Rights in Israel submitted a request to an Israeli court that Abu Dhra' be permitted to receive physical therapy after he became wheelchair bound as a result of muscular dystrophy. The court approved the request, but Ramleh prison clinic ignored it and claimed it was “unnecessary," Addameer says. During the remainder of his sentence, “he contracted… several illnesses, including lung failure, immunodeficiency, and a brain disease.” Just 10 days after his release in November 2012, he fell into a coma, in which he remained until he died on Monday night. The prisoner rights organization added that over 200 prisoners have died in Israeli captivity since the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem began in 1967. “Addameer demands that the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Health Organization intervene immediately on behalf of patient prisoners, who total more than thirty, to prevent further cases of death by medical negligence like Ashraf's," the statement read. As of December there were 4,656 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli military prisons. 178 of them were administrative detainees (without trial or charge), and 21 of them were under the age of 16. Another 13 prisoners were members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Three administrative detainees have been on hunger strike for 56 days: Jazzer Ezzidine, Yousef Yasser, and Tarek Qa'adan. Another prisoner, Samer Al-Issawi, has been on partial hunger strike for over 175 days. BN
