The two organizations said in a joint statement that Sirhan, from the city of Haifa, had been detained since October 15, 2001, and was serving a life sentence.
The statement added that during his years of detention, the martyr prisoner was subjected to harsh interrogations and systematic torture methods that left serious health effects on his body. He also suffered from repeated solitary confinement and medical neglect, which led to him developing chronic heart, artery, and vein diseases and high blood pressure.
The two organizations indicated that his health condition had deteriorated significantly in recent years, to the point that he was forced to use a wheelchair, stressing that the Israeli occupation prison administration continued to detain him in what it described as harsh conditions despite his health condition.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Affairs Authority and the Prisoners' Club held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for Sarhan's death, considering him one of the victims of what they described as policies of torture and medical neglect inside prisons.
With Sarhan’s death, the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli occupation prisons since October 2023 has risen to 90, while the number of prisoners who have died in prisons since 1967 has reached about 327, according to data from Palestinian prisoners’ institutions.
The two organizations also renewed their call for international human rights organizations to take practical steps to hold Israel accountable for the violations committed against Palestinian prisoners, given the continued detention of approximately 9,500 Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons.
