Published On 4/24/2026
Ramallah- The family of Palestinian prisoner Abdel Basset Maatan expressed their concern for his life, as a result of the difficult and harsh conditions of detention he lives in, despite his suffering from cancer, like the rest of them. Prisoners bOccupation prisons Israeli.
The Israeli occupation rearrested prisoner Maattan (51 years old), from the town of Barqa, east of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank, two months ago and transferred him to administrative detention (a secret indictment file with no specific period of detention), and he is now detained in the Israeli Ofer prison, west of the city of Ramallah.
Mass graves
Zubaida Maatan – the wife of prisoner Abdel Basset – said that what worries them most about him now is not the disease – despite its severity – but the conditions of the prisons, the torture and the daily violence to which the prisoners are exposed, stressing that they now fear for his life, “especially in light of the medical neglect, starvation, and the spread of scabies and diseases in the prisons that the released prisoners are transmitting.”
Maatan’s wife added, “Prisons have become mass graves, serving as the gates of hell open to the policies of oppression and brutal treatment practiced by the occupation.”
Despite spending 11 years in occupation prisons, the two arrests that coincided with the war on Gaza – one of them being this one – remain the most difficult and difficult for the Maattan family, especially in light of the difficult conditions of torture against the prisoners and the issuance of the death penalty against them.
Regarding this, she explained that her husband suffered greatly in his penultimate detention due to medical negligence and failure to provide treatment, “and even his medication that they took when he was arrested was not given to him, and upon his release, he had lost 40 kilograms of weight.”
He was exhausted by illness and hunger
She added that illness and starvation exhausted him, so he emerged very thin, and had weakness in his memory, body, and vision, and he remained for a long time until he regained some of his health. But the occupation did not care and arrested him again.
In the last arrest – the prisoner’s wife continued – “Our fear for him has increased, because he has not yet recovered, and for two months he has been completely absent, especially in light of the ban on visiting lawyers due to the state of emergency imposed by Israel, and what we know is only through liberated prisoners, and we learned that he is in a section containing 150 detainees, of whom 130 are infected with scabies.”
For his part, Ibrahim, the son of the prisoner Maattan, said that they have become very concerned about his father and are demanding his release, adding, “We want my father to be released because he is detained without charge and has cancer. The most dangerous thing is that the arbitrary execution of prisoners law has been issued against the prisoners, and thus the fears for them increase.”
