Palestinian Political Detainee Succumbs to Wounds Sustained During Arrest

Ramallah, Palestine - A 49-year-old Palestinian political detainee, who was shot with live ammunition by Israeli occupation forces as they arrested him in September 2023, has succumbed to his wounds while in custody. 

Israeli occupation authorities disclosed to the Palestinian Authority’s General Authority of Civil Affairs that Nasser Khalil Radaydeh from the town of al-Ubeidiya near Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, was martyred on April 20, 2025, at the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.

Radaydeh, who was a father to seven children, is the second Palestinian political detainee to lose their lives in the span of three days. On April 17 - marked annually as Palestinian Prisoners’ Day - a 20-year-old detainee was also martyred in what is unfolding to be the most violent period yet for Palestinians, including prisoners, in the history of the Israeli occupation. 

Radaydeh was transferred out of Israel’s Ofer Prison just yesterday and hospitalized. He has been detained since September 18, 2023. 

Following his arrest and severe injury, he was hospitalized at the Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem. His visitation reports at the time had showed that his condition had stabilized. 

Radaydeh is the latest Palestinian political detainee to be killed both directly and indirectly by the Israeli prison administration across central prisons, interrogation centers and military detention camps. Detainees are being murdered in a myriad of ways and crimes, the most prominent being physical assault, torture including sexual assault, starvation, deprivation of medical care, and deprivation of necessary hygienic products. 

Since the genocide in occupied Gaza began in October 2023, the rate of Palestinian detainees being killed has become unprecedented. There has been 65 identified political prisoners who have been martyred in custody during this time frame, 40 of whom were abducted from the Gaza Strip. The bodies and remains of only two of the 65 have so far been returned with Israeli occupation authorities continuing to hold their bodies hostage. 

With the killing of Radaydeh, the number of identified martyred Palestinian detainees since the occupation of 1967 has risen to 302 people. Dozens of other detainees, particularly from Gaza, have been killed since the genocide, but their bodies remain forcibly disappeared and Israeli authorities refuse to disclose information about their fate. 

In this context, Palestinian prisoner defense groups reiterate their call to the international human rights system to launch an independent and neutral international investigation into the circumstances surrounding the martyrdom of dozens of prisoners, as a result of torture, starvation, medical neglect, sexual assault, and other crimes. The international community must act now to save the lives of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, including children, in Israeli custody. We call for effective actions to hold the leaders of the Israeli occupation accountable for the war crimes they continue to commit against our people. The world must impose sanctions on the occupation, to isolate it and force it into submission.