Occupation reveals martyrdom of Palestinian detainee seven weeks late
24/2/2025

Ramallah, Palestine – Israeli occupation authorities have disclosed the martyrdom of Palestinian political detainee Mus’ab Haniyeh, 35, in response to a legal request for information by the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) about the man’s fate.

Haniyeh was killed on January 5, 2025, in Israeli custody. He had been arrested from Hamad city in the Gaza Strip 10 months prior, on March 3, 2024, in good health. He was a husband and father to a nine-year-old boy. The occupation refuses to divulge the manner in which Haniyeh was killed, or even where he was being held.

Haniyeh is the latest Palestinian to be killed in the occupation’s prisons and military camps in obscure ways that the Israeli army continues to conceal. With Haniyeh, there have been 59 identified Palestinian political detainees who have been killed in custody since the start of the genocide in October 2023, at least 38 of them arrested from Gaza. Dozens more have been killed with the occupation refusing to reveal their fate or identities, leaving countless families in fear and psychological torture. The total number of identified martyred detainees since the occupation of 1967 is 296 people. The rate of killings in prisons and military camps is the highest historically.

The occupation army only responds sporadically and arbitrarily to legal requests for information, and often uses the pretext of an ‘ongoing investigation’ to evade accountability, and to torture Palestinians both physically and mentally as a matter of policy. The Israeli army is the only official side able to reveal the fate of martyred Palestinian detainees since there is no evidence of their killing with the army continuing to withhold their bodies.

The Commission and the PPS stress that the rate of Palestinian detainees losing their lives is unprecedented and will only increase with time. Thousands of Palestinians are held behind bars undergoing a myriad of severe violations including torture, starvation, sexual assault, deprivation of medical treatment, unsanitary conditions leading grave and infectious diseases. The international community must act now to save the lives of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli custody.

Commission of Detainees' Affairs & Palestinian Prisoners' Society