Israeli police questioned about 20 prison guards as part of an investigation into the death Palestinian prisonerwho reportedly died of violence, Israeli and Palestinian sources said today.

According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Mr Taer Abu Assab38, from the town of Qalqilya in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, died in November after being beaten by prison guards in the southern Israeli prison where he was being held.

“This week, 19 prison guards were questioned (…) and, at the end of their questioning, they were released with restrictive conditions,” a police spokesman said.

The spokeswoman added that the investigation concerned an “allegedly violent incident that occurred about a month ago in a prison in the southern part of the country.”

He declined to give further details, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Asked by French Agencya representative of the prison authorities did not want to make any comment.

According to Israeli media, the body of Taer Abu Assab, who is affiliated with Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and who was serving a 25-year prison sentence, was found in his cell.

According to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayomthe results of the autopsy did not allow to determine whether the alleged violence of his jailers was the cause of his death.

But the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) assessed in a statement that the case “raises serious suspicions about the transformation of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) from a professional prison organization into a vindictive and punitive force.”

“Six prisoners have already died in prison (…) All cases of rights violations and deaths must be immediately investigated,” the text added.

The far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Givr called for his part, in an interview with Israel Hayom, to respect the presumption of innocence of the prison guards until the end of the investigation.

“We must not forget that our prison guards are dealing with human garbage, with murderers, who represent a security risk,” he told the newspaper.

On October 7th, the day the war between Israel and Hamas began, the Israeli prison authorities announced a tightening of the conditions of detention of Palestinian prisoners: they are no longer allowed to leave the cells — thus visiting — no purchases from the canteen are allowed neither is power from electrical outlets inside the cells, and surprise searches are more common.

According to figures from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, an association that defends their rights, there were, at the beginning of December, about 7,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.