Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, who was affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, has died after nearly three months of hunger strike in an Israeli prison. That report international media. He was found unconscious in his cell on Tuesday morning, according to Israeli authorities.
Adnan started his hunger strike shortly after his arrest in early February in protest at his detention. Israeli authorities held him under the guise of administrative detention; suspects are held indefinitely without charge or trial. The reason for his arrest was not specified at any point in Adnan’s case either. According to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, Msmore than a thousand Palestinian prisoners incarcerated without charge or trial, the highest number since 2003.
The WAED Prisoners Association, a Palestinian NGO that defends the rights of detainees, speaks of a “cold execution” by Israeli authorities. Adnan was due to appear before the military court in Ofer, in the occupied West Bank, on Thursday. A decision on his release was to be made at this hearing, but it was cancelled.
According to Adnan’s wife, Israeli authorities did not allow her husband to visit his lawyer and refused to take him to hospital, she told the French news agency AFP. The Israeli authorities claim that Adnan refused to receive medical treatment. Adnan, 44, from Arraba in the north of the West Bank, had gone on hunger strike several times after previous arrests. In 2015, for example, he already held a 55-day strike.