The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club confirmed on Thursday evening the death of prisoner Islam Al-Sarsawi (42 years old) from Al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza, who was abducted during the recent storming of Al-Shifa Hospital. Medical sources confirmed that he died as a result of being tortured inside the Sde Teiman camp. He is one of dozens of detainees who have died in the Israeli occupation’s prisons and camps, and the Israeli occupation continues to conceal their identities.
The two institutions confirmed in a joint statement that, “according to the information that was verified, Al-Sarsawi was killed four months ago”, though they only confirmed his identity today.
The Commission and the Club explained that the prisoner Al-Sarsawi was abducted along with dozens of others from inside Al-Shifa Hospital, and their fate or places of detention were not revealed at the time.
The Commission and the Club stated that with the martyrdom of the prisoner Sarsawi, the number of martyrs of the prisoner movement since 1967 has risen to (257), including (20) prisoners who have been martyred since the beginning of the war of extermination, and whose identities have been announced, in addition to dozens of martyred prisoners from Gaza, and the occupation continues to conceal their identities.
The Commission and the Club called on the international community institutions to take immediate action to stop the crime of forced disappearance and the crimes of torture that are escalating in an unprecedented manner inside the Israeli occupation prisons and camps, and not to leave the male and female prisoners as prey to the Israeli occupation prison administration and its systematic policy, which today has more support than ever and by a political decision from the colonial government, to kill them, as the prisoners are facing the harshest and most severe stages as a result of the crimes of torture and humiliation.
The Commission and the Club called for the acceleration of the formation of a UN investigation committee with a comprehensive mandate to investigate all crimes committed by the occupation against male and female prisoners, and for the human rights system to emerge from its state of inability to stop the war of extermination and prisoner aggression, which constitutes another aspect of it.
According to the two institutions, the number of prisoners in the occupation prisons has reached more than 9900, and this number does not include all detainees taken from Gaza – since there are an unknown number of people who were abducted and taken to the Sde Teiman and other Negev prison camps.
