Three Gaza detainees die in Israeli custody after torture and neglect

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced on Thursday the names of three Gaza detainees who died in recent months inside Israeli prisons and military camps.

The victims were identified as Tayseer Saeed al-Abed Sabbaba, 60, Khamis Shukri Mar'i Ashour, 44, and Khalil Ahmed Khalil Haniyeh, 35.

In a joint statement, the two organisations said Sabbaba's family had been formally notified of his death by the Israeli legal centre HaMoked, which relayed an official response from the Israeli army.

The Palestinian prisoner groups also received separate replies from the army confirming the deaths of Ashour and Haniyeh.

According to those notifications, Sabbaba died on 31 December 2024, two months after his arrest, while Ashour had died on 8 February 2024, a day after he was detained, and Haniyeh had died on 25 December 2024, nearly a year after his arrest.

Sabbaba was a father of nine, Ashour a father of six, and Haniyeh a father of four.

The organisations said the three men were among dozens of detainees who had died in Israeli custody since the start of the genocide in Gaza.

They accused Israel of subjecting detainees to widespread torture, starvation, medical neglect, sexual abuse, humiliation and inhuman detention conditions.

They added that many Gaza detainees believed to have died in custody remain forcibly disappeared, while others were executed in the field.

The bodies returned after the recent ceasefire, they said, offered "clear evidence" of systematic killings carried out by Israeli forces.

Human rights groups and Palestinian institutions have documented more than 100 detainee deaths since the start of the Gaza war, though the figure was not final.

Palestinian organisations have so far identified 84 of them, including 50 detainees from Gaza.

The latest deaths bring the total number of Palestinians known to have died in Israeli custody since 1967 to 321.

The Palestinian prisoner groups held Israel fully responsible for the deaths and renewed calls on international human rights bodies to take concrete action to hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes against detainees and the wider Palestinian population.

They said Israel had long benefited from "exceptional immunity" provided by the United States and other international powers, arguing that this protection had intensified during the Gaza war despite overwhelming evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity.

They added that the abuses inside Israeli prisons were part of a broader effort to carry out "slow executions", making this period the bloodiest in the history of the Palestinian prisoners.

Their statement came as Israeli lawmakers continue advancing legislation that would authorise the execution of Palestinian prisoners, effectively turning extrajudicial killings into a legal policy.

The organisations also noted that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons were detained without trial, either under administrative detention or classified as "unlawful combatants".

As of November 2025, they recorded 3,368 administrative detainees and 1,205 people held under the "unlawful combatant" designation, a figure that does not include all detainees from Gaza.