Death of detained journalist Ihab Diab raises Palestinian captive martyr’s toll to 91

The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) said Monday that Diab died on September 18, 2024. The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs announced his death on Sunday after receiving an official response from the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) confirming his death.

Zionist regime’s forces arrested Diab at his home in front of his family on December 12, 2023. From that point onward, his family received no information about his fate. Zionist regime’s authorities initially denied holding him before later confirming his death.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said the IPS claimed that Diab had suffered from a health condition. His family rejected that account, saying he was in good health and had no known illnesses when he was detained.

The commission said Diab is believed to have died on September 18, 2024, bringing the number of Palestinians who have died in Israeli custody since 1967 to 328, including 53 detainees from the Gaza Strip since the start of the Gaza genocide.

Diab was born in 1990. He was married and the father of two children. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media from Al-Azhar University in Gaza and worked as a journalist.

Diab had previously lost two brothers. One was killed on November 11, 2004, and the other on December 27, 2008.

The PPS said more than 250 journalists have been arrested or detained since the start of the genocidal war. Diab is the second journalist to die in Israeli custody during this period, after journalist Marwan Harzallah.

The organization added that Israeli forces have killed more than 260 journalists in the Gaza Strip, describing the deaths as part of ongoing attacks against journalists and attempts to silence their reporting.

The PPS said Diab’s death adds to a record of violations against Palestinian journalists, including killings, arrests, and enforced disappearances.