PA says Palestinian detainee, 21, dies after a year behind bars despite no prior medical issues

The Palestinian Authority says that a 21-year-old Palestinian man died early Tuesday at the Ofer security prison in the West Bank despite having no known health issues before he was placed in administrative detention on October 5 last year.

He is identified as Moataz al-Atrash, from Hebron in the southern West Bank.

The PA Commission for Detainee Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society NGO say an Israeli court today ordered an autopsy be carried out on Atrash’s body in the presence of a representative appointed by his family. They don’t specify which court issued the order.

His death brings to at least 92 the number of Palestinian inmates who have died in Israeli security prisons during the war in Gaza, the Palestinian prisoner agencies say, adding that there may be other dead prisoners whose identities are still unknown.

The agencies regularly accuse Israeli authorities of violence and medical neglect in prisons.

In a statement quoted by Haaretz, the Israel Prison Service refuses to discuss individual prisoners “out of privacy and security concerns,” but says “all detainees receive the rights and medical attention they deserve in accordance with the law and professional medical opinion.”

Administrative detention, the procedure under which Atrash was imprisoned, allows Israeli forces to hold Palestinians in custody for months on end with no charge or trial in cases where the forces suspect intent to commit a security crime but don’t have enough evidence to bring the case to court.

Atrash, accordingly, was held at Ofer “without charge or trial, under the pretext of a ‘secret dossier,'” the agencies say.