Ramallah, Occupied West Bank –Former Palestinian prisoner Hussein Masalmah has died, seven months after being released from Israeli custody due to illness related to leukaemia, with Palestinian officials accusing the Israeli authorities of “medical negligence” over his case.

Masalmah, 39, died on Thursday in a hospital in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

According to Palestinian prisoner groups, Masalmah had complained of severe abdominal pains while being held in Israel’s southern Naqab prison for two months before prison authorities agreed to transfer him to Soroka Hospital in Beer al-Sabaa, where he was diagnosed with an advanced stage of the blood and bone marrow cancer.

The Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees Affairs said in a statementon Thursday that Masalmah had been “martyred” by the Israeli authorities’ “policy of systematic medical neglinegligence” against him.

Similarly, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said it holds the Israeli occupation responsible for the former prisoner’s death, condemning what it said was the “crime of medical negligence”, long practised towards hundreds of ill prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israeli authorities released Masalmah on February 15, 2021, about a year before completing the 20-year sentence he was given in 2002 during the second Intifada.