Israeli prosecutors indict 12 prison guards after Palestinian detainee beaten to death

Israeli prosecutors have indicted 12 current and former Israel Prison Service personnel over the 2023 beating death of a Palestinian security prisoner at a facility in southern Israel, after investigators seized WhatsApp messages in which guards discussed the assault as it unfolded.

The indictment, filed September 1, 2026 with the Be’er Sheva District Court, charges the 12 with reckless homicide, causing aggravated serious bodily harm and multiple counts of aggravated assault. The shift commander and shift sergeant on duty face additional charges of obstructing the investigation.

Prosecutors say the case centers on the death of Thaer Abu Asab, a Palestinian security prisoner who was beaten in his cell in Wing 24 of Ketziot Prison, a high-security facility in Israel’s Negev desert that primarily holds Palestinians classified as security detainees, in November 2023. According to the indictment, the beating tore the walls of Abu Asab’s heart on the left-ventricular side and in the right atrium and broke several of his ribs, causing cardiac failure. He was taken from the prison to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, where doctors pronounced him dead. Eight other Palestinian prisoners were allegedly assaulted in the same incident, according to the indictment filed with the court.

Investigators seized WhatsApp messages the guards exchanged in real time during and after the beating, according to Haaretz reporting. The messages, described in the indictment and cited by Haaretz, show one guard expressing hope that Abu Asab would die while medics performed CPR, another describing the severity of the injuries guards had inflicted, and a third recounting blood in the cell block before confirming the prisoner’s death.

The Israel Prison Service said in a statement that “the incident occurred under the previous prison commissioner” and that the current commissioner had already ended the service of some of those involved after taking office, saying the organization would “not tolerate breaches of the law or its disciplinary rules.”

Ketziot’s commander, Brig. Gen. Yosef Knipes, denied a separate allegation from a witness that senior officers entered prisoner cells in tactical gear during the incident, calling the claim “divorced from reality.”

The indictment is one of a small number of criminal cases brought over Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since the war in Gaza began. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has documented at least 98 Palestinian deaths in Israeli prisons and military detention facilities since October 7, 2023, a toll it says is likely an undercount because rights groups have been unable to locate hundreds of additional detainees held in connection with the Gaza war. Separately, Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups Addameer, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society counted 81 deaths in Israeli detention over the same two-year period, and Palestinian Prisoners’ Society spokesperson Amani Sarahneh has said 237 Palestinians died in Israeli custody in total between 1967 and October 2023.

The case is now set to proceed before the Be’er Sheva District Court, where all 12 defendants will face trial on the charges laid out in the indictment.