AhlulBayt News Agency: A Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy group has voiced alarm over grave legal and humanitarian violations by Israel, accusing the regime of unlawfully detaining Palestinians who have already completed their sentences and withholding the bodies of those who died under torture in custody.
The Asra Media Office (AMO) reported on Monday that Israel continues to hold 32 individuals from Gaza behind bars despite their sentences having expired, with some cases stretching back months or even years.
The office stressed that this practice constitutes arbitrary detention, violates international law, and amounts to a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
According to AMO, these detainees remain imprisoned without ever being presented before a judicial authority, while their families are denied visitation rights or even basic information about their health.
The group described the policy as a systematic form of collective punishment imposed on the people of Gaza.
Article 132 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires the immediate release of detainees once their sentences are completed. Israel, however, has often been criticized for failing to meet this obligation.
AMO urged international human rights organizations to document these violations and press Israel to release the detainees without delay.
It also called on Palestinian officials to intensify diplomatic and legal efforts in international forums to expose what it described as an escalating atrocity.
The advocacy group emphasized that Israel bears full responsibility for the safety and lives of those detained without legal justification.
In November, Israel released nearly 2,000 prisoners, including 1,700 from Gaza, under a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal with the Hamas resistance movement.
Many of those released were in poor health, recounting experiences of torture, starvation, and humiliation during their imprisonment.
Currently, more than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are held in Israeli prisons, where they suffer medical neglect and harsh conditions that have led to the deaths of several detainees, according to both Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups.
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