Israel on Thursday released Palestinian prisoner Ahmed Manasra – arrested at the age of 13 and held for nearly nine and a half years – in a case that has drawn international condemnation over the treatment of Palestinian minors and the severe mental health damage he suffered during his incarceration.
"Manasra served nine and a half years of torment, pain, and hardships in Israeli prisons,” his lawyer Khaled Zabarqa told the Anadolu Agency (AA).
Zabarqa noted that Israeli prison authorities freed Manasra "away from the prison to prevent his family from receiving him, leaving him alone in an empty area.”
A passerby found Manasra in the Beersheba region in southern Israel and contacted his family, who reunited with him later, the lawyer said.
"The family waited outside Nafha Prison in the south, but he was released in a distant location,” Zabarqa said, suggesting the move aimed to deny him a celebratory welcome.
Israel arrested Manasra on Oct. 12, 2015, for allegedly planning to stab an illegal settler in the Pisgat Ze’ev settlement north of Jerusalem. He was slapped with 12 years in prison.
Police killed his 15-year-old cousin, Hassan Manasra, who was with him at the time.
"He entered prison as a child, facing a brutal world without tasting childhood,” Zabarqa said.
"He went in at 13 and emerged at 23,” he said, accusing Israeli authorities of treating Manasra "not as a child or under legal childhood standards, but with pure racism.”
Manasra’s suffering "was immense, yet he triumphed, exposing Israel’s policies and false values,” Zabarqa continued.
On Wednesday, Israeli officials summoned Manasra’s father, imposing restrictions on his welcome and barring celebrations, public gatherings, or media interviews.
They also called Manasra for questioning later Thursday at the Moskobiyya interrogation center in West Jerusalem for undisclosed reasons, the lawyer noted.
"Manasra endured unprecedented harsh conditions, but that didn’t sway Israeli courts, which ignored his psyche and childhood,” Zabarqa said. "We can say Manasra’s childhood was assassinated.”
A leaked video from his 2015 interrogation showed a 13-year-old Manasra crying, saying "I’m not sure” and "I don’t remember,” as an Israeli investigator shouted and threatened him.
Authorities first moved Manasra to isolation in November 2021, following a scuffle with another inmate. In interviews the following year, his family and lawyers said he was locked in a small cell for 23 hours a day and suffered from paranoia and delusions that kept him from sleeping. His lawyer said Manasra had tried to slit his wrists.
His family said he was transferred to the psychiatric wing of another prison every few months, where doctors gave him injections to stabilize him. A physician who was allowed to visit him when he was 18 diagnosed him with schizophrenia and attributed it to the toll of being in prison, warning that continued incarceration could lead to permanent disability.
