Cancer-stricken prisoner Walid Daqqa was today denied early release from Israeli imprisonment. The Israeli Occupation Parole Committee rejected an attorney’s request to grant Daqqah, 61, early parole, claiming that the ‘Prevention of Terrorism’ law applies to him – even though his actual sentence expired on 24 March 2023. The committtee claimed that Walid Daqqah has no right to request early parole. His legal team will study the decision and appeal it to the Central Court. In protest of the deprivation of his right to communicate with his family, Daqqah returned his medicine to the administration of the Israeli Ramleh Prison clinic. Daqqah rejected the prison administration’s delays and procrastination in making arrangements for communication with his family, despite his critical health condition. He also refused that arrangement for communication with his family should come at the expense of his fellow prisoners. According to the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer), Daqqa, a 61-year-old Palestinian writer, activist, intellectual, and political prisoner from the Palestinian city of Baqa Al-Gharbiya, colonized in 1948, was diagnosed with a rare form of bone marrow cancer in 2022 and has been in dire need of urgent medical attention since then. Walid is one of 19 Palestinians who have spent more than 30 years in Israeli occupation prisons and one of 23 Palestinians who have been incarcerated since before the Oslo Accords came into effect in 1991. Doctors, including Israeli physicians, have insinuated that his worsening health is a result of the Israeli Prison Service (IPS)’s systematic practice of deliberate medical neglect, including a recent denial of emergency hospital transfer after Walid suffered from a blood-clot-induced stroke in Askalan prison in February 2023. He was finally moved to Barzilai Medical Center, 11 days after surviving the stroke, following the recommendation of the Askalan prison doctor.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA