📌 Health of 22y/o Palestinian Political Prisoner Held Without Trial or Charge Deteriorating in Naqab Prison

Palestinian Prisoner’s Society
August 17, 2025

Ramallah, occupied Palestine – The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society is warning that 22-year-old political prisoner Ahmed Hatem Khdeirat, who is held without trial or charge under ‘administrative detention’ is facing a serious deterioration to his health due to chronic diabetes and scabies skin disease which have systematically been met with medical denial. 

The PPS explained that Khdeirat, who has been administratively detained since May 23, 2024, is one of the many prisoners suffering from diabetes and facing the crime of starvation, which has contributed to an unprecedented exacerbation of their suffering, in addition to a series of systematic crimes and policies that have affected all prisoners since the beginning of the genocide. 

The PPS noted that Khdeirat, who is being held in the Naqab prison, suffers from recurrent cramps, exacerbated hunger due to his diabetes (a severe drop in blood sugar), and severe itching due to scabies, which causes him extreme difficulty moving and meeting his needs. He also has suffered sharp weight loss of 40 kg, and according to a lawyer who recently visited him, he has been unable to get up from his mattress for two months. 

In this context, the PPS confirms that Khdeirat's condition is one among thousands of sick prisoners. It is worth noting that the spread of disease among prisoners today constitutes a central issue that poses significant challenges to the relevant institutions, both in terms of their inability to monitor medical cases inside prisons, and due to the occupation’s prison administration's deliberate imposition of further policies aimed primarily at killing prisoners. 

The PPS holds the Israeli occupation’s prison services fully responsible for the life of detainee Ahmad Khdeirat and reiterates its demand for the international human rights community to restore its necessary role in the face of the ongoing genocide and to end the systematic inaction that has afflicted the international community, while the occupation continues its crimes against prisoners in its prisons and military camps. It is noteworthy that the prison system has imposed conditions aimed at spreading diseases and epidemics, transforming them into a tool for physically and psychologically torturing prisoners. The majority of prisoners who contracted scabies during the recent period suffered from extremely difficult health conditions and tragic psychological conditions, and many of those who recovered from the disease have been infected again. 

Despite attempts by some institutions operating in the 1948-occupied territories to intervene through a petition submitted to the Supreme Court regarding the spread of the disease, the results remained very limited, due to the deliberate procrastination in eliminating the causes that led to its continuation, most notably: lack of hygiene, poor ventilation, insufficient clothing, and limited time for bathing. In addition to the overcrowding that contributed significantly to its spread, the continuous transfers between prisons, and the deliberate mixing of infected prisoners with uninfected detainees.