File photo: Palestinian detainee Ahmed Manasra. Photo courtesy of WAFA news agency.
Manasra was born on 22 January 2002 in Jerusalem into a family of ten. He has two brothers and five sisters. Before his arrest, he was an eighth-grade student at the New Generation School in Jerusalem.
He was arrested as a child at 13, under allegations of attempting to carry out a stabbing attack in occupied Jerusalem alongside his cousin, Hassan, who was 15 and killed during the incident.
On 12 October 2015, the day Manasra was arrested, the pair were assaulted by Israeli settlers.
A graphic video showing Ahmad lying on the street, bleeding from his head while Israelis taunted him, went viral, garnering millions of views.
After several hearings, an Israeli court sentenced Manasra to 12 years and a fine of 180,000 shekels.
In 2017, his sentence was reduced to nine and a half years.
Manasra was initially held for two years in a juvenile detention facility under harsh conditions before being moved to a regular prison after turning 14.
Throughout his years of detention, Manasra faced numerous court hearings, with one of the most significant being the classification of his case as “terrorism,” which obstructed any chance of early release.
During his imprisonment, Israeli authorities placed Manasra in solitary confinement for several years, refusing to ease the restrictions despite his deteriorating mental and physical health.
His lawyer, Khaled Zabarqa, confirmed that Manasra was released after serving his nine-and-a-half-year sentence.
Local sources reported that although it was expected that Manasra would be released from Nafha Prison, where his family had been waiting for him, they were surprised by a call informing them that he had been released in the Be’er Sheva area in the Negev desert.
Ahmad Manasra's painful saga in Israeli jails is one of hundreds of stories of Israeli abuse and torture against Palestinian detainees.
Former detainees in Israeli prisons have described increased instances of beatings, severe overcrowding, inadequate medical care, scabies outbreaks, and poor sanitation since the onset of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention facilities has nearly doubled since before the war, reaching 9,623 by early July, with almost half of them detained without trial or being informed of the allegations against them, according to B'Tselem.
In March, 17-year-old Walid Ahmad from the occupied West Bank, who had been held without charge in an Israeli prison for six months, was starved to death by Israeli authorities.
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