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A 16-year-old American citizen was freed on Thursday after spending nine months in an Israeli prison.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American teenager from Florida whose case was first exposed by the Guardian in July, was released following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, according to his family. Relatives said he was taken to a hospital for intravenous therapy and blood work immediately after his release, and noted he is severely underweight, pale and is still suffering from scabies contracted during his detention. Ibrahim had lost a quarter of his body weight in detention, his family said.
“Words can’t describe the immense relief we have as a family right now, to have Mohammed in his parents’ arms,” Zeyad Kadur, a close family friend, wrote in a statement, adding the family “has been living a horrific and endless nightmare” over the last nine months.
“Israeli soldiers had no right to take Mohammed from us in the first place,” he said.
Ibrahim was arrested in a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February when he was still 15 years old, with Israeli forces allegedly blindfolding and handcuffing him in the middle of the night. He was charged with two counts of throwing objects at moving vehicles, according to court documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The case first gained attention after 20-year-old American-Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet was allegedly beaten to death by Israeli settlers in mid-July. While reporting on his story, the Guardian learned that his younger cousin Mohammed Ibrahim had been held since February. No arrests have been made in Musallet’s killing, though Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador, called it a “criminal and terrorist act” and demanded Israel “aggressively investigate the murder”.
Ibrahim suffered double digit weight loss and developed scabies while in Israeli custody. The state department was involved in the case considering his American citizenship, which also prompted more than 100 US human rights, faith-based and civil rights organizations to demand his immediate release in August.
Last month, 27 Democratic members of Congress – including senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen – wrote to secretary of state Marco Rubio expressing “grave concern” over Ibrahim’s treatment and demanded the US act to secure his release.
His family said they had virtually no direct contact with him throughout his nine-month detention, receiving updates only through US embassy officials. The state department had appointed a dedicated official to handle Ibrahim’s case in September, the Guardian learned.
In an October interview with Defense for Children -Palestine, Ibrahim described receiving “extremely insufficient” meals in detention, with breakfast consisting of just three tiny pieces of bread and a spoonful of yogurt. “Dinner is not provided, and we receive no fruit whatsoever,” he said.
Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military courts, according to a 2013 Unicef report.
Between 2005 and 2010, 835 Palestinian minors aged 12 to 17 were tried on stone-throwing charges in military court, with only one acquitted, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization.
Kadur stressed that countless other Palestinian children remain in similar circumstances.
“There are hundreds of children like Mohammed, unjustly trapped in an Israeli military prison, being subjected to Israel’s abuse and torture,” Kadur said. “No mother, father, parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle or child should ever have to go through what Mohammed just went through.”
As of September, 350 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 were being held in Israeli military detention according to the latest data from DCI-P.
