AI says Walid Daqqa's death is a 'cruel reminder' of disregard for Palestinian prisoners' rights

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He calls the last months of Daqqa's existence an “endless nightmare”, “subjected to torture or other ill-treatment”

April 8 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The NGO Amnesty International (AI) condemned this Monday the death of prominent Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, 62, which represents a “cruel reminder” of the “contempt” for the rights of those Palestinians who remain held in Israeli prisons.

“It is heartbreaking that Walid Daqqa died in custody despite numerous calls for his urgent release on humanitarian grounds following his diagnosis in 2022 of bone marrow cancer and the fact that he had already served his sentence,” stressed the senior director. of AI research, advocacy, policies and campaigns, Erika Guevara-Rosas.

In this sense, he has described as an “endless nightmare” the last months of Daqqa's existence, who “has been subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including beatings and humiliation by the Israeli Penitentiary Service, according to his lawyer.”

“He was not allowed to speak on the phone with his wife since October 7. His last appeal for parole on humanitarian grounds was rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, effectively sentencing him to die behind bars,” he added.

Guevara-Rosas has claimed that “even on his deathbed,” authorities showed “chilling levels of cruelty,” denying him adequate medical treatment and food, as well as preventing him from saying goodbye to his wife and four-year-old daughter, Milad.

“It means that he was only allowed to see his daughter Milad in person once in October 2022, after a legal battle of enormous proportions,” he said, calling on the authorities to return her body to the family “so that they can give him a dignified burial.

In addition to being one of the most prominent prisoners of the Palestinian struggle, Daqqa was also one of the oldest, whose detention dates back to March 1986, a date even before the signing of the Oslo Accords.

Although his release date was scheduled for March 25, 2023, the Israeli Justice added another two years to his sentence when he suffered from leukemia for being involved in a network that introduced mobile phones into prisons to allow prisoners Palestinians communicate with their families.

He was transferred from prison several times. In fact, in less than two months his right lung was removed, which caused “asphyxiation and a very serious respiratory infection” and a catheterization was also performed after suffering heart failure.

Daqqa joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1983 in his early 20s, being arrested just three years later, after which he was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence that was later reduced to 37 years.

The authorities allowed him to marry activist Sana Salama in Ashkelon prison in 1999, with whom he had a daughter through assisted reproduction in 2020 after managing to clandestinely remove his sperm from the center.