More on Seventeen-year-old Palestinian who died in Israeli custody
A 17-year-old Palestinian has died in Israeli custody at Megiddo Prison in northern Israel, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs has announced.
The teenager, Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad, is the first Palestinian minor to ever die inside Israeli prisons, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP). The Palestinian Liaison Office informed Ahmad’s family of his death but did not provide a cause of death.
Israeli authorities are withholding the teen's body.
Ahmad was detained from his house in the town of Silwad in the occupied West Bank in September, according to the DCIP. He was later transferred to Megiddo Prison, where he had limited communication with his lawyer and family. At the time of his death, he was in pre-trial detention.
“Walid is the first Palestinian child prisoner in history to die in Israeli custody,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, said in a statement.
“It is impossible to understate the urgency with which the international community must finally hold Israeli authorities accountable before more Palestinian children imprisoned in Israel’s dungeons suffer Walid’s fate.”
No Other Land co-director attacked by settlers and arrested by the Israeli army
Hamdan Ballal, the co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has been arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank after he was beaten and injured by Israeli settlers, his fellow co-director Yuval Abraham said on X.
“A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding,” Abraham said in a post.
“Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”
No Other Land, a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, follows activist Basel Adra as he risks arrest and violence to document the destruction of his hometown, Masafer Yatta, by the Israeli military.
Hamdan Ballal is the second from the right.
