Freedom Stolen: Palestinian Political Prisoner Placed Under Six-Month Detention Without Trial or Charge After Completing 12 Year Sentence

Palestinian prisoner legal groups have documented at least 20,000 ‘administrative detention’ orders issued, including new ones and renewals, since the start of the genocide.

Palestinian Prisoner's Society

July 30, 2026

Ramallah, occupied Palestine– Israeli occupation authorities have placed Palestinian political prisoner Mohammad Abdelwahab al-Madani (32), from Askar Refugee Camp in Nablus in the northern West Bank, under detention without trial or charge (“administrative detention”) for six months, despite his scheduled release on Wednesday after completing a sentence of 12 years and two months in prison, the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) said on Thursday. 

This is not the first time that his imprisonment is extended by occupation authorities. Al-Madani’s sentence was initially meant to end on May 30, 2026. His family was shocked when occupation authorities filed another case against him, extending his sentence by an additional two months and imposing a financial fine.

He completed the extra sentence on July 29, 2026. When his family went to receive him on Wednesday, they received a call informing them that a six-month “administrative detention” order had been issued against him, depriving him of his freedom for a second time on the very day he was to re-gain it.

The PPS said that the case of al-Madani, the brother of the martyr Mu'taz al-Madani, is not an isolated incident but rather falls within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation against thousands of prisoners through the mass arbitrary and retaliatory use of “administrative detention” to keep Palestinians in the prison system.

The unprecedent rate of the Israeli occupation’s use of “administrative detention” is one of the largest and most destructive developments since the start of the genocide in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian prisoner legal groups have documented at least 20,000 ‘administrative detention’ orders issued, including new ones and renewals, since the start of the genocide, the PPS said. 

The occupation has exempted no category of Palestinians from the policy of ‘administrative detention’, which has targeted children, women, the elderly, the sick, and the wounded alike. According to the latest figures, the occupation acknowledged holding 180 Palestinian children under ‘administrative detention,’ while dozens of women have been subjected to the same measure.

The PPS affirmed that, as of the beginning of July 2026, the number of ‘administrative detainees’ had reached 3,244 people, all of whom are subjected to a comprehensive system of crimes and violations, including torture, starvation, deprivation, humiliation, and assaults of various forms and degrees, similar to those experienced by all political prisoners and detainees in the occupation's prisons and military camps. A number of ‘administrative detainees’ have died in Israeli occupation prisons since the start of the genocide as a result of systematic torture and policies of medical neglect and abuse.

The PPS stressed that the occupation's continued expansion in the use of ‘administrative detention,’ particularly in the occupied West Bank, has had profound effects on Palestinian society after targeting thousands of individuals active in social, political, cultural, and trade union fields, in an attempt to undermine their societal role and strengthen the system of control and surveillance imposed by the occupation as part of its settler-colonial project.

In the same context, the PPS explained that the policy of ‘administrative detention’ has escalated in parallel with attacks by Israelis living in the West Bank, on Palestinian towns, as occupation authorities target many residents living in areas exposed to settler violence, particularly those who have played a role in confronting these attacks or protecting their local communities.

The PPS noted that, along with a number of specialized institutions, it has issued numerous reports and legal papers documenting the unprecedented crimes committed within the occupation's prison system since the beginning of the genocide. These violations have resulted in the killing of more than 100 Palestinian political prisoners and detainees, of whom the identities of 90 have been announced. Meanwhile, the occupation continues the crime of enforced disappearance against dozens of martyred detainees from Gaza, refusing to disclose their identities or the circumstances of their deaths.

The Palestinian Prisoner's Society called on the international community, the United Nations and its relevant mechanisms—particularly the Special Rapporteurs, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, and the International Committee of the Red Cross—to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities by taking concrete and urgent steps to end the arbitrary policy of administrative detention, pressure the occupation authorities to release ‘administrative detainees,’ and halt the use of this policy as a tool of collective punishment and retaliation outside the framework of any fair judicial procedures.

The PPS also called on international human rights organizations to intensify their efforts to document the crimes associated with ‘administrative detention’ and to work toward holding occupation leaders accountable for issuing and implementing administrative detention orders, considering them part of a broader system of persecution and arbitrary detention that has escalated to unprecedented levels in the aftermath of the genocide. It stated that these practices constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and emphasized the need to ensure that those responsible are not granted impunity or escape accountability.

(ENDS)