Prisoner died in PNA jail, said committed suicide
Palestine, Judicial, 2/4/1998

A Palestinian resident of the Hebron area who was found dead in his prison cell was said to have committed suicide and Palestinian police sources said he hanged himself using his shoelaces.

The Palestinian government ordered an autopsy and opened an investigation into the circumstances that led to the death of Nasser Hussein Salah Al Haroub, 28, of the village of Deir Samet near Hebron. Nasser was arrested on Monday afternoon and died 24 hours afterward.

"Only after autopsy will we be able to determine why and how Nasser died in custody," said Colonel Jibril Rajoub, head of Palestinian Preventive Security in the West Bank. Rajoub was among a number of senior police and security officials who visited the family of Nasser on Tuesday to pay them condolences. Rajoub said the investigation is continuing and the body was taken to Bethlehem for a postmortem examination that is to be attended by impartial observers solicited by the family, which wanted to know if Nasser was killed under interrogation or committed suicide. Rajoub stressed that Haroub was not arrested for security suspicions and confirmed that a government representative is due to attend the funeral, to show that the man had a clean security record.

Palestinian police brigadier general Tareq Zeid, Chief of Police in Hebron, said he was notified by the police station in the village of Dura about the arrest of Nasser for public offenses and not for security charges. He said that Nasser had requested to be left on his own inside his cell to write his confession about his alleged involvement in criminal offenses. "But Nasser was later found hanged in the cell with his own shoelaces," Zeid said.

If Nasser really committed suicide, Palestinian security sources said, then the investigation would involve those policemen who left him on his own in the cell and who failed to take his shoelaces away. The other side of the case that needs to be investigated, the sources said, is the behavior of Nasser prior to his alleged suicide and whether he showed any signs of desperation and low morale.

The Palestinian attorney general in Hebron, Wahid Al Amleh, ordered an autopsy to be performed to the body in order to examine what caused the death. The Palestinian government has lately become very sensitive to cases of deaths of inmates held in its prisons following allegations that severe torture was used in the past by some Palestinian policemen and interrogators.

According to Palestinian records, Nasser is the 15th prisoner to be found dead while in custody. In at least three previous cases, Palestinian officers and policemen were found guilty and sentenced to long term imprisonment. In the rest of the cases, investigations concluded that deaths were caused by suicide. In the case of Nasser, Palestinian medical sources said they saw no signs of beatings or violence on his body and that is why they tend to believe that he was not tortured but decided to take his life.

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