SALFIT, (PIC)
The young man Qusai Ibrahim Rayan, 29, from the town of Qarawa Bani Hassan west of Salfit, died on Monday about a month after his arrest following a gunshot injury inflicted by an Israeli settler.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs reported that Israeli occupation forces arrested Rayan, a father of a young daughter, on April 15, 2026, after he was shot by a settler in the Wadi Abbas area near the town of Deir Istiya. He was declared dead on Monday at Israel’s Beilinson Hospital due to severe wounds.
According to a joint statement, the Israeli occupation authorities claimed at the time of his arrest that he had attempted a stabbing attack, and his detention was extended for eight days. The lawyer demanded full clarification of his critical medical condition especially after being informed that he was unconscious and on artificial ventilation.
The Commission and the Society stressed that the prosecution’s allegations about Rayan’s intent to carry out a stabbing attack were “false and unfounded.” They asserted that Rayan was “killed in cold blood based on fabricated claims.”
They added that this crime is part of the ongoing crimes committed by the occupation against the Palestinian people, including field executions that have escalated in the West Bank, alongside settler attacks carried out under the protection of Israeli forces.
The two institutions also pointed to the presence of hundreds of wounded detainees whose numbers have risen since the Israeli genocide in Gaza, explaining that the occupation continues to hold them in “harsh and tragic” conditions, subjecting them, like other prisoners, to systematic abuses.
They held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the death of Qusai Rayan, and renewed their call on international human rights institutions to act to end paralysis and complicity in the face of the ongoing extermination policies against the Palestinian people, including executions and field killings, and to urgently intervene to stop crimes committed against prisoners in Israeli jails.
