A Palestinian prisoner in the Ramla Prison Clinic. His illness is considered one of the most serious medical conditions in the Israeli occupation prisons. He was arrested for the first time when he was 16 years old, and this arrest was followed by 3 more arrests. The Israeli authorities deliberately neglected his medical condition, adopting a “slow killing” strategy, and the disease spread to various parts of his body, and he was not released even though medical reports confirmed the seriousness of his condition.
Birth and upbringing
Assef Al-Rifai was born on September 24, 2002, in the village of Kafr Ain, northwest of Ramallah, in the central West Bank, to a family consisting of a father, mother, 3 brothers, and 4 sisters.
However, the prisoner Asif Al-Rifai did not know the meaning of normal life, and he did not have the opportunity to live a quiet life within the confines of his family. He had been arrested several times since he was a child and was subjected to physical injuries as a result of being targeted by occupation bullets.
When Asef was only 6 months old, the occupation forces arrested his father in April 2002, and he spent the first ten years of his life deprived of his father’s presence by his side, as he only saw him during the limited prison visits available to the family.
Arrest at a young age
Prisoner Asif Al-Rifai was not able to continue his education due to the injuries and repeated arrests he suffered. When he was 15 years old, he was shot by the occupation forces in his lower extremities, and only a year after this incident, he was arrested for the first time.
After his release from prison, he was injured again in confrontations with the occupation forces, which resulted in his arrest for the second time. He spent several days in detention this time, and in his third arrest, he remained in Israeli prisons for approximately 10 months.
He has cancer
Asif was released from prison after his third arrest, but he did not emerge unscathed. His body collapsed after several months and he developed colon and gland cancer. Doctors were astonished by his condition, especially since it was unlikely that a young man in his twenties would develop colon cancer.
Asif’s condition quickly deteriorated, and the cancer spread to other parts of his body, including the liver, intestines, and abdominal wall. His suffering was compounded by the difficulty of receiving treatment, as the occupation authorities refused to grant him a permit to enter occupied Jerusalem to undergo treatment.
Despite his illness and the medical reports that confirmed his poor health condition, the occupation forces arrested Asif Al-Rifai for the fourth time on September 24, 2022, that is, on his 20th birthday.
The suffering of the prisoner Asif Al-Rifai was not limited to repeated arrests that robbed him of his childhood and youth, but he also suffered from a further deterioration of his health due to deliberate medical negligence in the Ramla prison hospital, which is a systematic strategy followed by the occupation with detained patients in order to kill them slowly.
Al-Rifai’s last chemotherapy session was just two months before his arrest, and according to what his family reported, he was also supposed to undergo 4 additional sessions.
Al-Rifai’s family demanded treatment for their son while he was in prison, but the occupation prison administration continued to procrastinate for 6 months, and refused to take him to a specialized oncologist despite the medical reports explaining the seriousness of his condition and how important it was for him to undergo treatment.
After the prison administration agreed to give the prisoner treatment, he received it only once, during which he was restricted. Due to the failure to complete the necessary plan for treatment, the spread of the disease in his body increased.
In September 2023, the health condition of prisoner Assef Al-Rifai deteriorated significantly, and he was then transferred from Ramla Prison Hospital to the Israeli “Assaf Harofeh” Hospital to undergo surgery after doctors discovered the presence of a new tumor in the urinary tract, as the new tumor caused severe damage to the functions of the prisoner. Left kidney.
According to Israeli medical reports, Asef Al-Rifai’s condition is the most serious health condition among 24 other cases of cancer patients in occupation prisons in the year 2023.
These reports estimated that Al-Rifai may be only a few months away from death, and despite his critical condition, he was not transferred to a civilian hospital that would allow him to receive the necessary care and allow him to have his family members around him.
Demands for release
As Al-Rifai’s condition deteriorated, many efforts were made to demand his release, but the occupation authorities did not pay attention to them. The Prisoners’ Club held the occupation prison administration responsible for the fate of prisoner Al-Rifai, and all sick prisoners facing the crime of medical negligence. It also called on human rights organizations to intervene to immediately release Al-Rifai.
The Commission for the Affairs of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners also called on all humanitarian and international institutions and the Red Cross to stand by the prisoners so that they can obtain their most basic rights to treatment, in light of the deliberate and systematic medical negligence practiced by the Israeli occupation authorities with the aim of slowly killing patients and torturing their relatives and families.