Israeli Court Closes Investigation File into the Death of Child Prisoner Walid Ahmed in Megiddo Prison

The Prisoners' Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said on Wednesday that the Israeli judiciary closed the investigation file into the death of the child prisoner Walid Ahmed (17 years old) inside Megiddo prison north of Israel, accusing the judicial system of "collusion" in crimes committed against prisoners.

The two institutions explained that following legal follow-up on the file of the death of the child prisoner Walid Ahmed (17 years old) from the town of Silwad, north of Ramallah city (central West Bank), the Israeli court in Haifa north of Israel decided to close the investigation file, claiming that all avenues had been exhausted.

They added that the child died in March 2025 inside Megiddo prison north of Israel, while the court claimed "the absence of direct crime based on autopsy results issued by the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir" (Tel Aviv).

According to the final autopsy report, the death was attributed to acute pulmonary embolism caused by a blood clot, claiming long-term health deterioration, which the court adopted in its decision, without addressing the effects of deliberate starvation and deprivation of treatment as central causes of death, according to the institutions.

The institutions continued that the Israeli decision "with its disregard for the clear indicators on the martyr's body that prove torture through starvation and deprivation of treatment, is nothing but a blatant attempt to conceal the actual causes that led the child Walid to this catastrophic health condition."

They pointed out that "the course of judicial follow-up since the moment of the child's martyrdom revealed the extent of deliberate procrastination and delay by the Um al-Fahm police (north) and the occupation prosecution, and the refusal of both parties to provide serious updates to the court."

They clarified that this "reflects the lack of genuine will to investigate, and the ongoing effort to dispel suspicions and remove responsibility from the real perpetrators whose practices led to this result, especially since the child Walid Ahmed did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest."

The institutions also spoke of systematic disregard for documented data and confessions issued by Israeli agencies regarding punitive and starvation policies imposed on prisoners since the start of the Israeli genocide war on Gaza, considering that this confirms "the involvement of the judicial system in protecting these policies."

They considered the case of Walid Ahmed "a glaring example of what they described as policies of slow killing of prisoners inside prisons."

Israel detains in its prisons about 9,300 Palestinians, most of them detainees and administrative detainees, including 51 female prisoners and 350 children and about 350 administrative detainees, according to data from prisoners' institutions until the beginning of December.

Administrative detention is a decision to imprison by an Israeli military order claiming a security threat, without issuing an indictment, and it extends to 6 months renewable, and the intelligence provides the court with what is called a secret file that the lawyer and/or the detainee are prevented from accessing.

According to the institutions, the identities of 86 prisoners and detainees who died inside prisons since the start of the genocide war in Gaza have been identified "while dozens of martyrs from Gaza detainees remain under forced disappearance until now."

With American support, Israel launched a genocide war on Gaza since October 8, 2023, which lasted two years and left more than 70,000 dead and about 171,000 injured Palestinians, most of them children and women.

Simultaneously, its army and settlers escalated incursions into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, resulting in the killing of about 1,100 Palestinians, injuring about 11,000, in addition to arresting more than 21,000.