Post-Sentence Detention in Wartime: The Case of Fadi Abu al-Sabh
Fadi Abu al-Sabh’s sentence ended two years ago. He is still behind bars, and his family doesn’t know his fate
Fadi Hisham Ahmad Abu al-Sabh should have walked out of prison on May 19, 2024. He is still being held. His family does not know why.
Fadi, born on March 7, 1984, was arrested on May 18, 2019, and sentenced to five years. Finishing that sentence did not set him free.
His brother, Muath Hisham Ahmad Abu al-Sabh, says the family has not had a single visit with Fadi since his arrest. Contact broke off completely when the war began. Since then, they have had nothing but scattered accounts from prisoners freed from occupation prisons in earlier exchange deals. At the start of the war, the family also learned that the brothers’ father had been martyred.
According to a freed prisoner, Fadi heard the news from one of his friends, but he had no chance to find out what had happened to the rest of the family.
“Fadi knew about my father’s martyrdom, but after that he didn’t know who in the family was martyred, who went missing, and who was wounded,” Muath says. “And we know nothing about him either, except what reaches us from some of the freed prisoners.”
Over time, those reports have placed Fadi in Ofer Prison, still in the custody of the Israeli Prison Service. The family was also told of measures tied to the state of emergency introduced during the war. Once those measures end, they were told, his release could follow.
None of it answers the question that matters most: why didn’t Fadi walk out when his five years were up?
“Fadi was supposed to get out of prison on May 19, 2024. His sentence ended, but he is still being held, and we don’t know his legal situation or his health, or the reasons that kept him from getting out,” Muath says.
The Abu al-Sabh family is asking for one thing: to know what has happened to their son. They want a clear answer on his situation and on why he is still detained after serving his sentence. Muath closes his message with an appeal to government institutions and prisoners’ rights organizations to step in, establish his brother’s legal and health status, and expose why he remains behind bars. The family has spent years waiting, he says. Since the war on Gaza began, it has lived in fear, with no news.
Fadi served his sentence. He is still in prison. His family has not visited him once since his arrest, and it is still waiting for word that his years of absence are over.
