Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan dies in Israeli prison

World
By William

DEVELOPING STORY,

Israeli prison authorities said Adnan was found unconscious in his cell after nearly three months of hunger strike.

Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, who was affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, has died after nearly three months on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison, Israeli prison officials said.

Adnan “refused to undergo medical tests and treatment” and “was found unconscious in his cell early Tuesday morning,” the Israel Prison Service said.

Adnan started his hunger strike shortly after his arrest on February 5.

He had gone on several hunger strikes following previous arrests, including a 55-day strike in 2015 to protest his arrest under so-called administrative detention, in which suspects are held indefinitely by Israel without charge or trial.

Israel is currently holding more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners without charge or trial, the highest number since 2003, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked.

“Khader Adnan was executed in cold blood,” the WAED Prisoners Association in Gaza told Reuters news agency after hearing of Adnan’s death.

The Palestinian New Agency WAFA reported that Adnan, 44, from the town of Arraba near the town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, had refused to eat for 87 days in protest of his detention without charge, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

“This is a very dangerous thing that has happened,” said Mustafa Barghouti, the former Palestinian information minister and general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative political party.

The Israeli government and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir “are personally responsible for this assassination attempt,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera.

“I call it an act of murder because the Israeli government knew very well, and its military courts, that someone who has been on a hunger strike for 87 days and has not received any form of medical care could die at any moment. And that is exactly what happened,” said Barghouti.

“Mr. Khader Adnan was arrested without charge. It’s not the first time. He has been arrested under what they call administrative detention, which means Israel can arrest anyone without even saying why. Free of charge. Without any evidence. Without trial,” he said.

“This is a country that practices fascism. Israel is a country that is guilty of unacceptable human rights violations.”

Adnan, a father of nine, had been arrested 12 times during his lifetime and had gone on hunger strikes in Israeli prisons at various times, WAFA reported.

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