JENIN, Palestinian Territories: A Palestinian journalist said Israeli prisons have become a “graveyard” for the living, following a dramatic decline in his health after being released earlier this year.
Mujahed Bani Mufleh, 37, spent six months in jail after being accused of inciting violence against Israel through his journalistic work.
Two days after his release in January, he suffered a severe brain hemorrhage and was admitted to hospital in critical condition, according to the Palestinian Prisoners´ Club advocacy group.
Now frail and barely recognisable, Bani Mufleh is recovering at a hospital in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, after undergoing a series of surgeries during which doctors removed part of his skull.
“The prison was like a graveyard,” Bani Mufleh told AFP, as he undergoes rehabilitation to regain his ability to talk and move.
“I was assaulted inside my home in front of my children,” he said of his 2025 arrest during a raid on his home.
“I was beaten inside the military jeep in the first minutes after my arrest, and on the first day I was taken to hospital because I could no longer breathe as a result of the beating.”
Israeli military and prison authorities did not immediately respond to AFP´s request for comment on Bani Mufleh´s allegations. Israel´s prison service has previously said that all prisoners are detained according to the law with their basic rights fully upheld.
Soon after his release he posted a video online saying that in jail he “came to understand what real hunger means”.
Israeli, Palestinian and international NGOs have warned of alleged mistreatment, torture and a deterioration in conditions inside Israeli prisons since the outbreak of the Gaza war following Hamas´s October 7, 2023 attack.
Bani Mufleh, editor of news website Ultra Palestine, part of Qatar-based media network Ultra Sawt, said he had been “placed in administrative detention without any complete or substantiated charge. They claimed that I incited violence but had no proof”.
