Unexplained deaths of Palestinians in Israeli prisons have been on the rise since October 7 last year, when Hamas attacked Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Authority (PA) Prisoner Affairs Committee based in the West Bank, conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israel have deteriorated dramatically.

In its extensive report, the BBC refers characteristically to the cases of two Palestinians who died in Israeli prisons after being brutally beaten, which the Israeli authorities deny happened.

As of October 7, thirteen Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli prisons, “the majority of them from beatings or refusal to take medication,” the committee’s head, Qadoura Fares, told the BBC.

Abdulrahman Mari was one of them. A carpenter by trade, in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, he was returning from work in Ramallah last February when he was arrested at a mobile checkpoint. He was placed under administrative detention – under which Israel can hold people indefinitely without charge at Megiddo prison.

His brother Ibrahim said the charges against him were minor, such as participating in protests and possessing a firearm. However, he was also accused of membership in Hamas, although there were no specific charges of activities within the group.

Abdulrahman Mari

Ibrahim is still trying to figure out how exactly his brother died. It must rely on testimony from Abdulrahman’s former inmates. A former fellow prisoner of his brother, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, said: “After October 7, it was total torture. They beat us for no reason, searched us for no reason.”

He described seeing Abdulrahman being severely beaten in front of him and others.

“At 9 in the morning, they entered our cell and started beating us. One of the guards started insulting Abdulrahman’s parents, which he could not stand and started fighting back. They beat him badly and took him to another cell upstairs for a week. During that time you could hear him screaming in pain.”

He said he learned of Abdulrahman’s death only after he was released from prison a week later.

Israel’s prison service did not directly respond to the BBC’s questions about Abdulrahman’s death or those of the other 12 Palestinians the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee says have died, saying: “We are not familiar with the allegations described and to our knowledge they are not truth”.

Professor Danny Rosin, a physician from the group Physicians for Human Rights, attended the examination of Abdulrahman Mari’s body. His remarks corroborate what his roommate and brother Abdulrahman told the BBC.

Professor Rosin’s report mentions bruises on Abdulrahman’s left chest and that he had several broken ribs. External bruising was also observed on the back, buttocks, left arm and thigh, and on the right side of the head and neck with no underlying fractures.

Professor Rosin noted in his coroner’s report that while no specific cause of death was found, “one can assume that the violence he suffered as evidenced by the multiple bruises and multiple severe rib fractures contributed to his death.”

He also added that an “irregular pulse” or a “heart attack” could be caused by these injuries.

Israel currently holds more than 9,300 security detainees, the vast majority of whom are Palestinians according to the Israeli rights group HaMoked, including more than 3,600 people in administrative detention.

Qadoura Fares argues that after October 7 everything changed and the Hamas attack “affected every aspect of the prisoners’ lives”, claiming that the prisoners have suffered from hunger and thirst and that some of those with chronic illnesses have been refused medication. The beatings became more regular and more brutal. I met a prisoner who had lost 20 kilograms in the last three months,” he said.

The BBC had previously heard from Palestinian prisoners who described being beaten with sticks, dog-gagged and stripped of their clothes, food and blankets in the weeks after 7 October.

Israel’s prison service has denied any ill-treatment, saying “all prisoners are held in accordance with the law, with respect for their basic rights and under the supervision of a professional and qualified prison staff.”

It said the prisons were put into a “state of emergency” after the outbreak of war and that “it was decided to reduce the living conditions of security prisoners”. The examples he gave were removing electrical equipment and cutting off electricity in cells and reducing inmate activities in the wards.

“They covered the son’s face with a cloth and tied it around his neck with a rope”

In the West Bank village of Beit Sira, Arafat’s father Hamdan showed where Israeli policemen had kicked in the door of his house and stormed in at 04:00 on October 22 in search of his son.

The police covered his son’s face with a thick black cloth and tied it around his neck with a rope. The mask smelled strongly, he said, and Arafat was clearly having trouble breathing while wearing it.

Two days later a phone call came. Arafat had been found dead in his cell in a West Bank prison.

Israeli authorities have not explained how he died. Arafat had type 1 diabetes and suffered from intermittent low blood sugar.

His father said one of the officers who arrested Arafat had told him to take medicine with him, but it was unclear whether he had succeeded.

The BBC obtained a report from Dr Daniel Solomon, a surgeon who was present at Arafat’s autopsy at the request of Doctors for Human Rights. The doctor said it was carried out in Israel on October 31, but added that the condition of the body, due to prolonged cooling, had made it difficult to determine the cause of death.

He also noted the absence of records showing whether the diabetes drug had been administered and at what dose.

The report also cited the need for other tests beyond the autopsy to determine the cause of death.

Neither Arafat’s nor Abdulrahman’s bodies have yet been returned to their families, who want to say their last goodbyes.