Monday, April 11, 2022, 11:24 On the morning of Monday, April 11, Gur Hamel (Gur ben Ya’ir) died in his cell in the Ayalon Prison. His medical condition had been serious for several days, but despite repeated requests, directly and via Honenu, he was not granted suitable treatment by the Prison Service. Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar, who assisted Hamel for approximately 20 years, and filed many petitions on his behalf regarding his rights, stated, “We will demand a thorough examination into the cause of his death.”
As of this posting, Hamel’s family has not received an official notification from the Prison Service of his death. They were notified by other authorities in the prison who heard about the death.
This morning (Monday), after they received the bitter news, the family said that negligence on the part of the Prison Service caused his death: “The Prison Service has blood on their hands. Gur pleaded for medical treatment for many days, but the response was contempt and scorn. We have no words.”
Yesterday (Sunday) and this morning (before notification of Hamel’s death), Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar sent letters to the Prison Service demanding that Hamel be given medical treatment and evacuated to the hospital for urgent care. All of the demands were rejected.
Hamel had even filed an urgent petition with the Central District Court regarding his condition and demanding medical treatment. The court scheduled a hearing for this coming Wednesday, at which Gur was expected to demand that the court order the Prison Service to grant him medical treatment.
Gur Hamel, who was in his 50s at the time of his death, was born on Kibbutz Sa’ad, and lived in Itamar as an adult. Hamel was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1998 murder of an Arab in the Shomron as revenge for the murder of his friends Harel Ben-Nun, Hy”d, and Shlomo Libman, Hy”d, who were murdered in the Shomron by Arab terrorists. The day of the murder was the day marking 30 days since the murder of Ben-Nun and Libman, and the day that Danny Vargas, Hy”d, a guard working for the Israel Electric Corporation near Kiryat Arba, was murdered by Arabs.
Various committees refused to reduce Hamel’s sentence. In November 2011, after the terrorists who murdered Libman were released in the Shalit Deal, David Libman, Shlomo’s brother, said that Ya’akov Ne’eman, then Justice Minister, is the one who can release the Jewish nationalist prisoners, and mentioned Hamel: “My brother’s murderers were released, but his friend who was driven to act in kind is sitting in prison. This is illogical and not right. Ne’eman is the one who can right the wrong and release the Jewish nationalist prisoners, and I hope that he will indeed order their release.”
In August 2013, Hamel went on a hunger strike in protest of the continued incarceration of Jewish nationalist prisoners while Arab terrorists were being released from prison.