A 21-year-old Bedouin man from the Negev desert has died after being held for nearly two weeks in Israeli custody under the internal security service, with his family demanding answers over the circumstances of his death and rejecting the authorities’ account.
Saber Al-Amital, a locksmith and welder with no criminal record, died on June 20 at Barzilai Hospital in Israel’s Ashkelon, roughly two weeks after he was arrested by Israeli authorities and placed in the custody of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency.
His family says they were kept in the dark for days after his disappearance and only later learned he had been detained. His father Odeh said Saber had travelled to Beersheba on the day of his arrest and then vanished. The family searched for him for two days before being informed by the police that he had been arrested.
“We came to Barzilai Medical Centre and saw him all hooked up to machines. He was like a vegetable; his brain wasn’t functioning,” Odeh said, according to Haaretz. “From a healthy boy who was arrested while walking on his own two feet, he ended up in this condition.”
The Shin Bet said Al-Amital was arrested on June 4 on suspicion of involvement in cross-border arms smuggling and held at Shikma prison in Ashkelon. It claimed that he was interrogated in accordance with the law and that on June 7 he was found to have “attempted to take his own life” in his cell before being transferred to hospital. The Israel Prison Service said the circumstances are under review.
The family categorically rejects that account. His father said: “They took a healthy son from me and returned him as a corpse. Saber did not commit suicide, and we want to see camera recordings to find out what really happened.” He described his son as someone with no criminal record who “didn’t harm anyone.”
Al-Amital’s lawyers have filed an urgent petition with the Beersheba District Court calling for a judicial inquiry into the circumstances of his death, targeting the Prison Service, Shin Bet, police, and Barzilai Hospital, citing a “real possibility of exceptional circumstances” that warrant an immediate investigation.
His attorneys said: “It is inconceivable that the police and Shin Bet detained a young man, healthy in body and mind, with no criminal record, who worked long hours at a factory supporting his family, and returned him to his family as a dead body.”
His body has been transferred to the National Centre of Forensic Medicine for examination. The family has declined a full autopsy for religious reasons, meaning only an external examination is expected.
The case has drawn attention due to concerns over detention conditions.
Al-Amital had appeared before a court the day after his arrest and told the judge he was in good health. The court extended his detention until June 11, citing reasonable suspicion, with no public explanation of what occurred in the days that followed.
According to Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups, Al-Amital’s death raises the number of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli custody since October 2023 to 91.
Hamas’s Prisoners’ Media Office has called for an independent international investigation, while Palestinian rights groups have renewed demands for accountability over deaths in custody.
Israeli authorities have not issued a statement on the cause of death.
