Khader Adnan: Born free, died free
‘If I die, do not despair; no matter what the Occupiers do and no matter how much they persist in Occupying and oppressing’
By Nadav Franckovich • Translated by Sol Salbe
Khader Adnan went on hunger strike six times during his long years of imprisonment in the prisons of the Israeli Occupation — more than 9 years of imprisonment over 12 separate periods of detention, most of which in administrative detention. Those periods came without any semblance of a trial or so-called justice, without an indictment or any evidence. In total, Adnan was on a hunger strike for 314 days of his life, not much short of a whole year.
Against the background of his refusal to turn up to the Shin Bet/Shabak interrogation (which increased his persecution) he said, “I was born free and I will not go to them voluntarily, the denial of my freedoms and my arrests are an attack on my very identity.”
Adnan said that during one of his first periods of interrogation, “I was tied to a special chair during interrogations that is structured in a way that broke my back, with my hands handcuffed back in a very painful way, and that’s how they would leave me shackled and leave the room. Long days of interrogations continued with several interrogators yelling and swearing at me from all directions at the same time. .. One of the interrogators grabbed my beard and pulled out my hair, and picked dirt from the sole of his shoe and smeared it on my moustache to humiliate me, so I decided to go on a hunger strike.”
When the lawyer for Addameer, the human rights organisation representing Palestinian prisoners, came to visit him during one of his hunger strike against his administrative detention he said: “I will continue the hunger strike that I started until the end, whether they let me see a lawyer again or not and whether there will be media coverage or not.” Addameer was of courses outlawed about a year ago by the government of Bennett, Lapid, Gantz, Lieberman, Sa’ar, Michaeli, Horowitz and Abbas.
In his will he wrote, among other things:
“Praise be to Allah, the Ruler of the Universes, who gave me the strength to go on a hunger strike in the fight for freedom…
I am sending you these words as I am dying, my strength is fading, my bones are decaying, every shred of fat in my body is gone, while I am imprisoned here in the prison in the beloved and ancient Palestinian Ramla… words that I bequeathed to my family, my children, my wife and my people…
If I die, don’t let the Occupier dissect my body. Bury me next to my father and write on the grave: ‘Allah’s humble servant Khader Adnan is buried here’… and let there be a simple grave…
Do not despair, no matter what the Occupiers do and no matter how much they persist in Occupying and oppressing…
I send my love and blessings to all of you, to the relatives of the martyrs and the incarcerated prisoners, and to all the freedom seekers, the activists of the struggle and the revolutionaries.
From me — your loving husband, to you Umm Abd al-Rahman. Your loving father, my children. Your loving brother, my brothers and sisters. A loving son of your people, my people.
With love, Khader Adnan.”
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