Abdul Rahman al-Maari, 33, died in Megiddo on Nov. 13. A carpenter and father of four, Maari had been in prison since February 2023, according to his brother Ibrahim, who said he was arrested at a temporary checkpoint and accused of being affiliated with Hamas and possessing a firearm.
Relatives lost touch with him after Oct. 7, when family visits were shut down. They are still trying to piece together the details of his death.
A report by PHRI doctor Danny Rosin from his autopsy found that “Bruises were seen over the left chest, with broken ribs and chest bone underneath. … External bruises were also seen on the back, buttocks, left arm and thigh, and right side of the head and neck.”
Khairy Hamad, 32, a prisoner in the same section, said Maari was kicked down a flight of about 15 metal stairs while handcuffed — a punishment for speaking back to guards during a room search as inmates were stripped and beaten.
Hamad said he and his cellmates had been ordered to the ground floor and Maari landed about five yards away from him. He was conscious, he said, but bleeding from the head. Maari, too, was moved to isolation in Tora Bora. From the cell next door, 53-year-old lawyer Sariy Khourieh listened to him wail in pain for hours.
“He was screaming all day and night,” Khourieh said. “I need a doctor,” he remembers him shouting, again and again.
At 4 a.m., he finally fell silent.
In the morning, Khourieh listened as the guards discovered the lifeless body and called a doctor. He heard them try to revive Maari with a defibrillator, then saw him taken out in a body bag.
“In a modern society, things like this shouldn’t happen,” his brother said.
Reports of medical assistance being denied are pervasive in the testimonies of former prisoners. The death of Muhammed al-Sabbar, 21, on Feb. 28 could have been avoided if his chronic condition had been treated properly, according to Rosin from PHRI, who sat in on his autopsy.
Sabbar’s family said he was arrested for incitement in connection with posts he made online. He had suffered since childhood from Hirschsprung’s disease, a condition that causes severe, painful bowel blockages. He needed a special diet and medication.
Sabbar’s stomach began to swell in October after he was denied his medication, said Atef Awawda, 54, one of his cellmates. A prison doctor had given him a single injection earlier that month, Awawda recalled, but told Sabbar not to tell anyone. “This was the last time we received medicine,” he said.
“Mohammed’s death could have been avoided with stricter adherence to his medical needs,” Rosin’s letter to his family said, describing his colon as dilated and filled with a large amount of fecal matter.
By the time he was rushed to an emergency room, “his condition was already such that the chance of saving him was slim,” the report concluded.
A record 9,700 Palestinian security prisoners were being held in Israeli prisons in May, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner rights organization. Some 3,380 were administrative detainees, the group said, held without charge or trial. The numbers do not include prisoners from Gaza; Israeli authorities will not reveal exactly how many have been detained or where they are held.
Cells made for six sometimes held double that number, former inmates said, with mattresses placed on the floor.
Some said coverings were removed from cell windows in the winter to expose them to the cold. Others said the Israeli national anthem was played incessantly at high volumes; lights were left on at night to disturb their sleep.
One Palestinian prisoner was beaten in front of a judge as he joined a hearing via video link in November, according to his lawyer and court records reviewed by The Post.
“We can hear now in the background cries of people being beaten,” the court minutes read. The shouts stopped when the judge intervened.
“My nose is broken,” said the defendant, whose name was redacted in court records. “I ask that the hearing not end before they promise not to hit me.”
Violence and medical negligence were accompanied by the withholding of food, former prisoners recounted. Each said they had lost significant weight in jail, shedding between 30 and 50 pounds.
Journalist Moath Amarneh, 37, imprisoned for six months in Megiddo after filming demonstrations in the West Bank, said his six-person cell held up to 15 people during his stay.
The inmates would share a plate of vegetables and yogurt for breakfast. For lunch, each prisoner received half a cup of rice, and the cell — however many men were in it — would divvy up a plate of sliced tomatoes or cabbage. On good days, there might be sausage or beans. Dinner was an egg and some vegetables, he said.
“It’s barely enough to survive,” said lawyer Aya al-Haj Odeh, who said some clients reported being given as little as three slices of bread a day or a few spoonfuls of rice and having limited access to drinking water.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Supreme Court in April over what it called it a “policy of starvation.” Ben Gvir wrote to the group taking credit for the policy, saying he was working to “worsen the conditions” of security prisoners to “create deterrence,” the ACRI said.
Muazzaz Obayat, 37, could barely walk when he left Ktzi’ot, in southern Israel, last week. He was arrested in the aftermath of Oct. 7 on suspicion of ties to Hamas, but no charges were ever brought against him.
His curly black hair and beard were unkempt; his cheekbones jutted out, and his eyes were sunken.
At a clinic in the West Bank town of Beit Jala where he was receiving medical care, he said he wasn’t sure how old he was or the ages of his five children.
“I know nothing but imprisonment,” he said.
Once an amateur bodybuilder, he said he’d lost more than 100 pounds in nine months.
He whispered as he described a guard sexually assaulting him with a broom. His doctors said he was suffering from post-traumatic stress and malnutrition.
“It is Guantánamo,” he said.
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