JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- An Israeli court on Monday sentenced two policemen to 30 months in jail each over the death of a Palestinian detainee whom they abandoned on the side of a highway in the middle of the night.

In 2008, Omar Abu Jarban, from the Gaza Strip, was hospitalized for two weeks in Israel after entering illegally and crashing a car he had stolen, Jerusalem Magistrate's Court said in its ruling.

After being discharged, Israel ordered him deported rather than prosecuted, but two days later he was found dead, apparently of dehydration, just over the boundary of the occupied West Bank.

He was still wearing hospital pyjamas, hooked up to a catheter and barefoot.

The court said the two policemen assigned to deport Abu Jarban had "left him, in that condition, in the dead of night, on a dark road ... as if he were just some object no one wanted."

Branding their conduct "ugly and sickening," it said Abu Jarban had been incoherent and unable to walk without the support of two people when abandoned.

The policemen were convicted of negligent homicide in May and will begin serving their prison sentences in August.