‘Israel’ hands over body of dead Palestinian female detainee after withholding it for 42 days

Hebron (QNN)- Israeli occupation handed over on Thursday body of Palestinian female detainee, Saadia Matar, who died last month in an Israeli prison as a result of the Israeli policy of medical negligence practised against Palestinian detainees.

Media coverage: "The Israeli occupation hands over the body of Palestinian prisoner Sadiya Matar, who died inside Damon Israeli prison last month." pic.twitter.com/Y6TTJptMXL

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) August 11, 2022

68-year-old Saadia Matar died on July 2 in the Israeli occupation prison of Damon. Matar was one of 32 Palestinian female detainees held in Israeli prison of Damon near occupied Haifa.

Palestinian prisoner’s advocacy groups accused the Damon prison administration of medical negligence as Matar’s health condition had recently been in decline due to multiple chronic illnesses, including high blood pressure and diabetes.

The groups confirmed that Matar lost consciousness after performing her ablutions for morning prayers. Fellow detainees had immediately transferred her to the prison’s clinic, where she died.

On December 18, 2021, Matar was brutally beaten and arrested by Israeli occupation forces near a military checkpoint in Hebron’s old city for allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing operation, and this had aggravated her already weak health.

Matar, a mother of eight from Idna town in Hebron, was the oldest Palestinian female detainee. With her death, the total number of Palestinians who have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 rises to 230.

The groups also noted m that Matar attended a court hearing in a wheelchair on 28 June, when the prosecution sought a five-year prison sentence and 15,000 shekel ($4,200) fine.

Several Palestinian prisoner’s advocacy groups said that the female Palestinian detainees at Damon face particularly harsh conditions and suffer from ongoing neglect.

Regarding withholding Palestinian martyrs’ bodies, for families, Israel’s practice of withholding their sons’ bodies amounts to collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law.

Since 1967, ‘Israel’ had also established cemeteries of numbers in closed military zones where it held the bodies of Palestinians and Arabs who were killed during the war or the struggle against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, eastern part of Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

‘Israel’ is still withholding the bodies of 104 Palestinian martyrs killed by its forces since 2015, including the bodies of nine detainees, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees.

Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, says “the withholding of Palestinian bodies is a standard practice long used by Israel which violates its obligations as an Occupying Power under international law. Customary international humanitarian law stipulates that parties to an armed conflict must respect the dead who “must be disposed of in a respectful manner.” It further obliges parties to the conflict to return the remains and personal effects of the dead to their families. In addition, Article 17 of the Second Geneva Convention requires that the deceased must be held in accordance with the religious rites that they belong to.”