44-year-old Palestinian man from Nablus walks out of Israeli prison after 22 years

By Humaira Ahad

Ahmed Hussein Zalloum, a Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, was released on November 26 after spending 22 years in different Israeli prisons.

Zalloum was 22 when the apartheid regime arrested him from his home in the occupied territories, framing him on trumped-up charges that were never proven.

According to the local prisoners’ advocacy group, the 44-year-old's family tried to appeal against his illegal sentence several times, but the regime courts rejected the petitions repeatedly.

Detained in 2002, Zalloum experienced years of medical neglect in different Israeli jails, which resulted in various health complications. He struggled with kidney failure and severe internal inflammation.

The Palestinian man also suffered from injuries as a result of his arrest and custodial torture, with fragments of shrapnel embedded in the left side of his head. He endured chronic stomach and chest inflammations.

During more than two decades of his illegal incarceration, the occupation authorities even refused to allow his father to visit the Zalloum when he was in critical condition inside the jail.

Witnessing his deteriorating condition, Abdel Nasser Farwana, a former prisoner and researcher in prisoner affairs, appealed to the Ministry of Prisoners and Freed Prisoners in the occupied West Bank, to intervene in order to save Zalloum’s life.

Farwana had received many letters and appeals from prisoners lodged in Shatta prison, located in Beesan Valley in the occupied territories where Zalloum was being held.

The prisoners stated that Zalloum’s health condition was very worrying as he was suffering from several diseases and his weight had also decreased significantly due to health issues.

Zalloum’s family appealed to human rights organizations in the occupied West Bank and outside to intervene and raise the matter with the Israeli authorities to save the life of their son.

In a brazen violation of international humanitarian law, the regime authorities never informed Zalloum about the severity of his disease, hiding the results of his diagnostic tests from him. 

The Palestinian man’s mother was quoted as saying that the prison administration refused to treat her son as he struggled with chronic kidney failure.

In one of her interviews Zalloum’s mother revealed that during her visit to the prison, she felt her son had begun to lose his memory because of the medication forcefully administered to him by the Israeli prison administration.

The fellow Palestinian prisoners explained that the medicine prescribed to Zalloum at Israel’s Ramla Prison Hospital for nerve pain would make him fall asleep for days.

Red Cross volunteers later confirmed that the "medicine" was fatal for him.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners, framed on bogus charges and serving their sentences without trial, are undergoing similar brutal treatment in various Israeli jails.

According to figures by Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner support group, more than 10,200 Palestinian political prisoners are illegally languishing in the prisons of the Zionist regime.

This includes 3,443 so-called “administrative detainees,” 270 child prisoners, and 94 female prisoners. More than 432 prisoners are serving more than 20 years in prison.

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