The Palestinian adolescent who died in Israeli prison has shown signs of famine, an autopsy report

Tel Aviv (AP) – Famine was probably the main cause of death for a Palestinian teenager who died in an Israeli prisonAccording to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy.

Walid Ahmad, seventeen, who had been detained for six months without being charged, suffered from extreme malnutrition and also showed signs of inflammation of the colon and scabies, said that a report written by Dr. Daniel Solomon, who looked at the autopsy, led by Israeli experts, at the request of the boy’s family.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the family’s Solomon report. He did not conclude a cause of death, but said that Hmad was in a state of extreme weight loss and muscle waste. He also noted that Hmad had complained in inadequate food prison since at least December, citing reports from the prison medical clinic.

Ahmad died last month after collapsing in Megiddo prison and hitting his head, Palestinian officials said, citing accounts of eyewitness to other prisoners. The penitentiary service of Israel said that a team had been appointed to investigate the death of Ahmad and that its conclusions would be sent to the authorized authorities.

Ahmad is the youngest Palestinian prisoner to die in an Israeli prison since the start of the Gaza War. He was arrested from his home in the occupied West Bank during a raid before dawn in September for allegedly launched stones on soldiers, said his family.

The autopsy was carried out on March 27 at ABU Kabir Forensic Institute of Israel, who did not publish a report of his conclusions and did not respond to requests for comments. The lawyer for the Ahmad family, Nadia Daqqa, confirmed that Solomon, a gastrointestinal surgeon, was authorized to observe the autopsy by an Israeli civil court.

Generalized abuse in Israeli prisons, say the defense groups

Rights groups have documented generalized abuse in Israeli detention establishments Holding thousands of Palestinians who were brought together after Hamas’ October 7 attack, the fiery attack War in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian authority affirms that Israel holds the bodies of 72 Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli prisons, including 61 died since the start of the war. Israel often keeps bodies of dead Palestinians, citing security reasons or for a political lever effect.

Conditions in Israeli prisons have aggravated Since the start of the war, the former prisoners have said at the AP. They described blows, severe overcrowding, insufficient medical care, scabs and bad health conditions.

Megiddo’s prison, a maximum security center where many Palestinian detainees, including adolescents, are detained without indictment, is considered to be one of the hardest, said Naji Abbas, head of prisoners and detainees from the Department of Doctors for Human Rights Israel.

The penitentiary service of Israel said that it operated in accordance with the law and that all prisoners receive fundamental rights.

Ahmad’s lawyer, Firas Al-Jabrini, said that the Israeli authorities have denied his client’s visit to prison, but that three prisoners said that Hmad had suffered from severe diarrhea, vomiting, headache and dizziness before his death. They suspected that it was caused by dirty water, as well as by cheese prison and yogurt guards brought in the morning and who sat all day while the prisoners fasted for the Sacred Muslim month of Ramadan, said the lawyer.

Malnourished and fragile

According to Dr Solomon’s report, the autopsy has shown that HMED probably suffered from inflammation of the large intestine, a condition known as colitis which can cause frequent diarrhea and may in some cases contribute to death.

But medical experts have said that colitis generally does not cause deaths in young patients and was probably exacerbated by severe malnutrition.

“He suffered from famine which led to a serious malnutrition and in combination with an untreated colitis which caused dehydration and electrolyte deadlines in his blood which can cause anomalies and deaths of the cardiac rate,” said Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, the head of the doctors’ commission for the Israel human rights AP.

She said the results indicated medical negligence, exacerbated by Ahmad’s inability to combat disease or infection due to the evil and the fragility he was.

Dr. Arne Stray-Pedersen, professor of legal medicine at the University of Oslo in Norway, who was not involved in the autopsy, said that the report suggests that there was a period of malnutrition and prolonged disease which last at least a few weeks or months. “Based on the report, I interpret the underlying cause of death as being booming,” he said.

Skin rashes have also been noted on his legs and genital zone, depending on the report. There was also air between his lungs that extended around his neck and back, he said, which can cause an infection. Air can come from small tears in the lungs, which can occur from serious vomiting or coughing, he said.

Ahmad’s family said he was a healthy high school student who liked to play football before being arrested. His father, Khalid Ahmad, said that his son had spent four brief judicial audiences by videoconference, and he noticed one of them in February that his son seemed to be in bad health.

The family has not yet received a death certificate from Israel, Alder Ahmad said on Friday, and hope that Dr Solomon’s report will help bring the body of their son home.

“We will demand our son’s body for burial,” he said, “what’s going on in Israeli prisons is a real tragedy, because there is no value for life.”

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AP Jalal Bwaitel’s journalist contributed from Ramallah, in the West Bank.