Medical Neglect and Starvation in the Case of Palestinian Prisoner Ahmad Basisi
Ahmad Ibrahim Ahmad Basisi has lost about 30 kilograms in Nafha prison as the starvation policy in Israeli occupation prisons continues. He needs surgery. He still has not been allowed to have it.
His family says the 47-year-old’s health is deteriorating alarmingly. Ahmad, from Ramin, a town east of Tulkarm, has an enlarged gland and a mass in his lower back. Extra teeth press on his jaw, causing him severe pain. And the medical neglect never lets up.
He has a medical file documenting his condition and has asked for treatment again and again. The occupation authorities have refused to respond.
Hunger and illness are only part of it.
Since the start of this year, he has faced repeated suppression raids, more than three in January alone. One left him with a broken shoulder. During a visit, Ahmad told his lawyer he could no longer bear the constant beatings.
According to his family, the prison administration once stripped him, bound him, and forced him to sit in the prison yard in the sun for an entire day.
Ahmad was arrested on January 17, 2004. Since then, waiting has been a way of life for his family. More than two decades of joys and sorrows have passed, and through all of them the family badly needed him there to lean on. His mother, his wife, and his only son have lived without him, and with a patience whose weight only prisoners’ families know.
At the start of September, the occupation released that son, Abdul Rahman Basisi, 23, after two years in detention. Throughout those two years, he had hoped to see his father inside prison, even for a few minutes, to ease some of the pain of his father’s absence. The occupation denied him even that.
Once free, Abdul Rahman did not lead with what he had been through in prison. He talked about walking out without having seen his father, who is still serving his sentence. That heartache goes back to his first days. Abdul Rahman was born on December 9, 2003. He was no more than 38 days old when his father was arrested.
He grew up, and his father’s absence grew with him. His age now nearly matches the years his father has spent in prison on a 25-year sentence. Ahmad was denied the chance to watch his son grow up. And Abdul Rahman was denied a childhood and youth at his father’s side.
Through it all, the family’s messages to Ahmad never stopped: “Be patient… the reunion is near, even if the longing overflows.”
Abdul Rahman’s mother raised him alone, both mother and father to him, while his father spent those years behind bars. He missed his father in every part of his life: his childhood, his schooling, and his milestones. Even on the day of his release, he wished his father could be the first to greet him, though he knew Ahmad was still a prisoner.
It was one more dream the occupation took, just as it took years of life from father and son.
Ahmad Basisi is now in his 22nd year of captivity, weighed down by the years of absence. Illness, starvation, and medical neglect have worn his body down. So has the repression. His family is still waiting for the day he comes home a free man.
