A 30-year-old Palestinian man has died in an Israeli jail. After first attributing the death to cardiac failure, Israeli spokesmen adopted the phrase “unknown causes” after a postmortem showed no damage to the heart. The results of toxicology testing are pending.
Arafat Jadarat, of the village of Sa’ir, in the West Bank, died less than a week after he was arrested for throwing stones at Israeli troops. His postmortem was conducted by the Israeli state pathologist in the presence of an official Palestinian pathologist. The latter said that marks on the body indicated that Jadarat had been tortured. Israeli spokesman attributed Jadarat’s two broken ribs to “resuscitation efforts.” There was also a small abrasion on the right side of Jadarat’s chest.