Bethlehem -

"After nearly 19 years as a prisoner of the occupation, a patient was freed to hospitals and returned to his home as a martyr." Yesterday, Thursday, the martyrs cemetery in the town of Artas (south of Bethlehem, in the southern occupied West Bank).

His mother says that Hussein told her that "if he was martyred, she should not cry over him."

When he arrived at his home for the first time after his liberation - but he was a martyr - the ululations spread throughout the house, mixing with the crying of his relatives, before his mother kissed him the last kiss, and he moved him from his home in the town of Al-Khader (south of Bethlehem) to the cemetery of the martyrs.

Our correspondent: "A sad farewell to the released prisoner, the martyr Hussein Masalma, in Al-Hussein Hospital, prior to his funeral today."

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- Quds News Network (@qudsn) September 23, 2021

Liberation in hospitals

Since Masalma was released from captivity last March while he was a patient in hospital, he moved before that from the Negev desert prison (southern occupied Palestine) to Ramleh prison and Soroka Hospital, and after his liberation he was transferred to Hadassah Hospital in occupied Jerusalem, and he entered the West Bank only to the Istishari Hospital In Ramallah, he was martyred and returned to his home in Bethlehem as a martyr.

Human rights organizations concerned with the affairs of prisoners said that Masalma was tortured during the investigation and trial period when he was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, and the serious deterioration of his condition led to his release last March, about a year before the end of his sentence, but he was released to He was hospitalized due to his poor health, after it was found that he had leukemia.

hot file

Hussein’s father praised God for what he called the blessing of martyrdom, and described his feeling that he was happy with this ending for his son, who spent his youth years moving between the occupation prisons, and was captured for the sake of his homeland and defending it, but he appealed to all Palestinian officials to seek to end the detention of all prisoners, especially patients who cannot They are receiving treatment in occupation hospitals.

The Assistant Undersecretary at the Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, Abdel-Al Al-Anani, considered that the peace of a Palestinian martyr was a result of medical negligence, and the occupation authority did not release him until after making sure that he had entered a very critical health stage, and only a few months before the date of his release and the end of his sentence.

Al-Anani told Al-Jazeera Net that the file of sick prisoners is the hot file par excellence, because there are at least 550 cases of chronic diseases, which need urgent transfer to hospitals for treatment, but they are subject to a policy of deliberate medical negligence, including 13 prisoners who are permanently present in the so-called The Ramle prison clinic, or what the prisoners call “the cemetery of the living”;

Which lacks the minimum elements of medical treatment necessary for such difficult cases.

Cancer patients and amputees

Al-Anani lists the most dangerous types of diseases that Palestinian prisoners suffer in the occupation prisons, including kidney failure, and malignant diseases such as cancer.

Also among the prisoners are Nahed Al-Aqra' and Khaled Al-Shawish, who have special needs and amputees.

The problem with the aggravation of the prisoners' health condition - according to Al-Anani - is the late discovery of the disease, and after its exacerbation in the prisoner's body;

Therefore, it is difficult to treat, especially since most of them are sentenced to life imprisonment or high sentences, which later leads to their martyrdom, and the story of the prisoner Hussein Masalma - who surprised everyone with his poor condition - is evidence of that.

All of this indicates - according to Al-Anani - the seriousness of what prisoners are exposed to in the prisons of the Israeli occupation, with the number of martyrs of the captive movement rising since 1967 to 226;

As a result of being shot in detention, under torture, or as a result of severe beatings and attacks, among them 71 martyrs were victims of medical negligence.