The 17-year-old Brazilian teen Salah Al-Din Yasser Hamad has been detained since November 18, 2024 in the Israeli prison of Ofer, west from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
This is the same prison where his cousin Walid Ahmad, also 17, died after prolonged malnutrition, the Palestinian Arab Federation of Brazil (Fepal) said on Wednesday (8).
Imprisoned without trial, Salah faces 21 charges, including making homemade weapons, Molotov cocktails, throwing stones at soldiers and planning attacks on the army and settlers. Released a few days after Walid’s death, a cellmate of Salah’s told the Brazilian teenager’s mother, Nadia Yasser Hamad, about the boy’s sadness on hearing of his cousin’s death.
The family’s lawyer, then, obtained permission for Nadia to visit her son on Wednesday (9), based on the cellmate’s report, Fepal said on its website.
“Salah is a Brazilian and a minor, as well as being innocent. The Brazilian government needs to put pressure on him so that he is not mistreated and does not suffer the same fate as Walid,” his mother, Nadia, pleaded with Fepal.
“I told the commander that there was no reason for my son to be arrested, because there had been no disturbance from the local population for two years. The boys didn’t take part in any demonstrations, they didn’t throw stones at anyone. They knew that the repression had increased and anything would be used as an excuse to arrest them,” his father, Yasser Salah Hamad, told Fepal.
The last time the teenager was visited by his family was on February 24, when his father visited him in prison. “I didn’t recognize him. It was Salah who came to me, because I couldn’t identify him. He’s never had a beard, as he’s very young, but he had a huge beard and was very thin, malnourished.”
