Palestinian Minister of Detainees, Issa Qaraqe’, stated that Palestinian detainee Maisara Abu Hamdiyya, 64, died at the Intensive Care Unit at the Soroka Israeli hospital on Tuesday morning suffering from an advanced stage of cancer resulting of medical negligence in Israeli prisons.The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported that tension is mounting in Israeli detention facilities and that the army broke into sections 10 and 11 in Eshil Israeli prison after the soldiers broke into them and attacked the detainees with batons in addition to using teargas and pepper-spray.
Qaraqe’ said that the detainees decided to hold hunger strike starting Tuesday in all Israeli prisons and detention facilities, and added “what happened to Abu Hamdiyya is an ugly and very serious crime committed against the detainee who did not receive the needed medical attention and treatment”.
The Minister demanded forming an international committee to investigate the death of Abu Hamdiyya, “especially since he was diagnosed with cancer several years ago but did not receive specialized medical treatment.”
Abu Hamdiyya was kidnapped by the army in 2002 and was sentenced to a life term; he suffered from throat cancer and was moved a few days ago from Eshil prison to the Soroka Israeli hospital in Beersheba (Be’er As-Sabe’) after a serious deterioration in his health condition.
The death of Hamdiyya brings the number of detainees who died in Israeli prisons, due to torture, medical negligence or even who were shot and killed by the arresting officer since 1967, to 207 detainees.
Abu Hamdiyya was born in 1948 in Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank. He is a retired lieutenant and a holder of a B.A. Degree in Electronics. He was kidnaped by the Israeli army on May 28 2002, and was sentenced to a life term.
He was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned starting in 1969, and lived in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Kuwait between the years of 1970 and 1975. In 1970, as he was studying in Cairo, he joined Fateh movement currently headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.
In 1976, he was imprisoned under Administrative Detention orders without charges and remained in prison until 1978 before he was illegally exiled to Jordan.
Israel refused to allow him into occupied Palestine following the Oslo agreement in 1993, and was only allowed into the country in 1998 following pressure practiced by late President, Yasser Arafat.
He then joined the Palestinian Preventative Security until he was kidnaped on May 28 2002, and faced numerous charges; some even date back to 1991 before the Oslo agreement was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
On June 2 2005, he was sentenced by an Israeli court to 25 years, but on April 22 2007, the Israeli Military Prosecution appealed the court ruling and the court sentenced him this time to 99 years imprisonment.
