New Gaza detainee killed in Israeli prisons; toll since Oct. 7 hits 75
3 Min Read
Sayel Rajab Abu Nasr has died in Israeli custody, as detainee organizations report 75 deaths since October 7 amid systematic torture, starvation, and abuse in Israeli prisons.
-
Israeli soldiers stand outside the Ofer military prison near occupied al-Quds, occupied Palestine, on Saturday, January 25, 2025 (AP)
The Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners' Society (PPS) announced the death of Sayel Rajab Abu Nasr, a 60-year-old detainee from Gaza, who had been arrested by Israeli occupation forces since November 2023, shortly after "Israel" unleashed its war on the Strip.
The commission and the PPS stressed that the mass arrest of Gaza's residents by Israeli forces remains one of the most urgent humanitarian issues, exposing unprecedented crimes committed under occupation.
In a joint statement, the two organizations listed some of the Israeli crimes committed against Palestinian detainees during the war on Gaza, including torture, starvation, medical neglect, and sexual assault, adding that over the past several months, testimonies from Gaza detainees have revealed some of the most harrowing and extreme accounts of systematic, real-time abuse.
They emphasized that the death of martyr Abu Nasr adds to the record of "Israel's brutal system, which operates around the clock through a series of systematic crimes aimed at killing detainees."
The joint statement emphasized that these crimes constitute yet another aspect of the ongoing genocide committed by the occupation and a continuation of it.
'Israel' conceals details of detainee martyrdom
The organizations said that confirmations of martyred detainees from Gaza rely solely on reports from the occupation’s military under the existing verification protocol, though this narrative remains constrained by the occupation’s version of events, particularly as they persist in withholding the bodies and concealing the details of the killings.
The two organizations additionally revealed that the Israeli military has repeatedly manipulated these reports by providing contradictory information to Palestinian institutions, forcing them to resort to Israeli courts in an attempt to obtain definitive answers about the fate of the detainees.
They stressed that torture has been the primary cause of death for the overwhelming majority of victims following the genocide, alongside escalating medical neglect, deliberate starvation, and systematic sexual violence.
'Deadliest period' yet
The organizations confirmed that with Abu Nasr's death, the total number of fatalities among Palestinian prisoners and detainees since October 7 has reached 75, 46 of whom were documented detainees from Gaza.
According to these organizations, the Palestinian Captive Movement has documented 312 deaths since 1967, all verified cases of identified detainees, making this phase "the deadliest period in the detainees' history, featuring the harshest detention conditions on record."
It should be noted that the total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli occupation prisons has now reached more than 10,800 as of the beginning of July 2025, though this figure only includes those held in facilities run by the Israeli Prison Service and does not account for detainees held in military camps operated by the occupation forces.
Among these are 48 women, 440+ child detainees, and 3,600+ Palestinians held indefinitely under administrative detention, and 2,454 Gaza detainees branded as "unlawful combatants" by Israeli authorities.
