Published on 6/14/2026
The Israeli occupation authorities informed the family of prisoner Imad Rajeh Sarhan (47 years old) from the city of Haifa in the territories occupied in 1948, of the martyrdom of their son in Gilboa prison, after he suffered a heart attack yesterday, Saturday, without providing any additional details about the circumstances of his martyrdom or the circumstances of his health condition before death.
The Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club explained in a statement on Sunday that the prisoner Imad Sarhan “has been detained since October 2001, and has been sentenced to life imprisonment. During his first years of detention, he was subjected to harsh and long interrogations accompanied by systematic torture methods, which left serious and prolonged health effects on his body, and exacerbated the deterioration of his health condition over the years of his detention, in addition to his repeated exposure to solitary confinement.”
The authority and the club added that “the long years of detention and the torture and systematic medical neglect that accompanied them led to prisoner Sarhan suffering from chronic diseases of the heart, arteries and veins, in addition to his suffering from high blood pressure.”
In the last years of his detention, he was forced to move around using a wheelchair as a result of the sharp deterioration in his health. Despite this, the prison administration continued to detain him in harsh and difficult conditions.
The statement considered that prisoner Sirhan “is one of the victims of medical crimes and systematic torture policies to which Palestinian prisoners are subjected in Israeli occupation prisons, especially since the beginning of the crime of genocide against our Palestinian people.”
Brutality and annihilation
He also warned that “during this stage, the Israeli prison system adopted the most brutal policies based on torture, starvation, systematic medical neglect, and strict isolation, in light of the continuing prevention of International Committee of the Red Cross crews from carrying out their monitoring and humanitarian role, and depriving prisoners of communication with their families.”
The two institutions explained that with the martyrdom of the prisoner Sirhan, one of 118 lifelong prisoners, the number of martyrs of the captive movement whose identities have been announced since the beginning of the crime of genocide rises to 90 martyrs, while the number of martyrs of the captive movement since 1967 rises to 327 martyrs, according to the documentation processes available historically.
The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Prisoners’ Club held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the martyrdom of prisoner Imad Sarhan, and renewed their demand for the international human rights system to move from the circle of condemnation and documentation to taking practical and effective measures that lead to holding the occupation leaders accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against prisoners and detainees and the Palestinian people in general.
It also appealed to international human rights organizations to work to end the state of impunity that other international powers provided to the occupation system over many decades, which culminated in the ongoing crime of genocide, despite the accumulation of conclusive evidence, documents and testimonies confirming the occupation’s commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Commission and the Club affirmed that “the escalating crimes that the Israeli prison system continues to commit against prisoners and detainees constitute part of the comprehensive crime of genocide targeting the Palestinian people, and that what is happening inside the prisons cannot be separated from the colonial project based on killing, starvation, torture and subjugation. The occupation authorities also seek, through these policies, to carry out slow executions against prisoners, which has made this the bloodiest and cruelest stage in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement.”
According to the data available to the relevant institutions, as of June 2026, the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the occupation prisons reached more than 9,400, including 3,324 administrative detainees, and 1,316 detainees classified by the occupation authorities under the name “unlawful combatants.”
