Intl. Committee of Red Cross calls on Israel to release body of Khader Adnan

“We call on the Israeli authorities to release Mr. Adnan’s body, so his family can mourn and arrange a dignified burial according to their customs and beliefs,” the ICRC said in a statement following Adnan’s murder early on Tuesday.

The humanitarian organization had visited the detainee several times since his arrest in February in the occupied West Bank to monitor his condition.

The 45-year-old went on hunger strikes several times after previous arrests, including a 55-day strike in 2015 to protest his detention without charge.

Adnan was arrested 12 times and spent about eight years in Israeli prisons, most of which under the so-called “administrative detention,” in which Israel holds Palestinians on “secret evidence” for renewable six-month intervals without trial or charges.

Palestinians staged a general strike across the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip, calling for confrontations with Israeli forces in protest at the regime’s repressive measures against and the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Palestinian resistance groups and authorities have already mourned the murder of Adnan, holding the occupying regime in Tel Aviv fully responsible.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in a statement described the martyrdom of Adnan as a “deliberate assassination," saying Israel had killed him "by rejecting his request for his release, neglecting him medically and keeping him in his cell, despite the seriousness of his health condition.”

The OIC also called on Israel “to stop its continuous violations against prisoners and to release them immediately.”

There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.

Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention. They say administrative detention violates their right to due process since the evidence is withheld from prisoners while they are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their detention. Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.