Six
days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he
was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - and the day of his
death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in
front of a military judge at the Shin Bet's Kishon interrogation facility.
Sabbagh
reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his
lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress
positions with his hands bound behind his back.
When
it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who leaves a
pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. However, the
subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy
concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular
health.
What
the final autopsy did find, however,
was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and
had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips
lacerated; his face badly bruised.
The
ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel's Shin Bet is
common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel's prisons. According to
the prisoners' rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture
and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed,
Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues
was a direct result of medical neglect.
see more on aljareera
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