A Palestinian Authority minister said Israel was not doing enough to maintain the health of Palestinian prisoners.
Prisoner Affairs' Minister Issa Karaki was quoted by the Palestinian Ma'an news agency on Monday as saying that the recent discovery of cancer in 25 Palestinian prisoners "was a troubling phenomenon which indicates the decline in Palestinian prisoners' health conditions and the lack of minimal medical care."
Karaki mentioned a 22-year-old prisoner who was released from after falling ill with a tumor in his mouth. He said it was the second case of the same cancer in the space of a few months, and that in the first case, the prisoner was also released due to his disease.
The minister accused doctors in the Israel Prison Service of knowing that the prisoners were ill but waiting until their conditions worsened. He also claimed that many Palestinians released from Israeli prisons die of cancer.
"There are 1,500 [prisoners] who are in urgent need of medical treatment," he said. He further alleged that, "as exposed in Israeli media," Israel was conducting experiments on Palestinian prisoners. He called on the international community to intervene on behalf of the Palestinian prisoners and on the World Health Organization to investigate the decline in the health of prisoners in Israel.
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