Palestinian detainees from Gaza say they’re going through abuse in Israeli prisons

TEL AVIV and CAIRO — Within the early hours of Feb. 24, Sofian Abu Salah was woken from his sleep when dozens of Israeli troopers entered a faculty in Khan Younis within the southern Gaza Strip. He, his spouse and 4 kids had been sheltering there from the preventing between Israel and Hamas for greater than two months, after they fled their residence in a close-by city.

On that February evening, Salah says Israeli troopers separated about 80 Palestinian males from their households and informed them to strip all the way down to their underwear. Then they loaded the boys onto a truck.

“We were handcuffed and blindfolded and we sat on our knees with our heads down,” says the 43-year-old former taxi driver. “They started to beat us with batons and their [steel-toed] boots which have metal in the front.”

Salah says they have been taken to a jail in Israel — he doesn’t know which one — the place he was interrogated for 10 days. He remained blindfolded all through, he says, together with his arms sure behind his again.

Based on Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Abu Salah is certainly one of greater than 3,000 Palestinians who’ve been rounded up from the Gaza Strip since Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The militants killed 1,200 folks in Israel that day and took some 240 hostages, in keeping with Israeli authorities. Israel has been on heightened nationwide safety alert ever since.

Most Palestinians who’ve been rounded up since Oct. 7 are incarcerated with out due course of or any contact with the surface world, Israeli human rights organizations say.

Abu Salah says his left leg was significantly injured throughout one of many nearly each day beatings he acquired whereas he was held. It took a number of weeks, he says, earlier than he was handled.

“My leg swelled … it was blue from the toes to the knee … and oozing with pus,” he says. “They took me to the hospital, cleaned it, and told me it was okay.”

Abu Salah says he wasn’t given antibiotics or different medicine. A few week later, he was again within the hospital. Gangrene had set in.

His leg needed to be amputated.

Abu Salah was despatched again to jail after the operation. By his depend, he spent 52 days incarcerated. He was by no means charged. At no time did he see his household, a lawyer or a consultant from the Crimson Cross, he says.

Israeli legislation permits for Palestinians to be held for prolonged durations with out a lawyer

“People are being held for months,” says Jessica Montell, the chief director of HaMoked, an Israeli human rights group in Jerusalem which offers authorized assist for Palestinians. She says after the Oct. 7 assault, Israel amended its Illegal Combatants Regulation. Beneath the legislation, the state can prolong the period of time it detains folks with out trial if they’re suspected of hyperlinks to terrorist assaults.

Initially, she says, the amended legislation stated detainees may very well be held for 180 days earlier than seeing a lawyer. That was lowered in Might to 90 days. Nonetheless, Montell notes, that’s a very long time.

“It’s kind of an enforced disappearance,” she says. “We never had this phenomenon before.”

HaMoked and different Israeli human rights teams have appealed to the nation’s Supreme Courtroom to supply higher due course of for prisoners from Gaza, and for extra details about them. Montell says earlier than Oct. 7, the Israeli navy would affirm whether or not somebody was being detained and the place they have been being held. Not now.

“As far as the military and the Israeli government is concerned … they have said to the high court … they have no obligation to provide this information to families,” she says.

The navy periodically releases prisoners and sends them again to Gaza when they’re deemed to not be a risk. Some lately launched detainees from Gaza element harsh interrogation techniques by Israel’s navy and jail guards. Jamal Dokhan, 57, was arrested in Jabalia, in central Gaza, by Israeli troopers in mid-Might. The daddy of six says he was taken to a navy jail in Israel, the place he and different detainees weren’t allowed to lie down. They might solely sit or stand.

However the worst, Dokhan says, was the canine.

“They would let the dogs into the cell. They didn’t bite, but it was terrifying,” he stated. “You felt if these dogs attacked … they could tear you to pieces.”

Dokhan says earlier than every interrogation session, he was despatched to what he known as “the disco room,” the place he was subjected to vivid lights and blaring music day and evening. Such techniques have been used to overload prisoners’ senses and soften them up for interrogation.

“I would stay there two or three days, the music didn’t stop, not even for a second. It hurt me mentally,” he stated.

Israel denies abusing Palestinian detainees

Israel’s navy wouldn’t remark particularly to NPR about Dokhan’s or Abu Salah’s instances however says lots of the prisoners it holds in custody are a part of Hamas and are answerable for the Oct. 7 assault. In a press release to NPR, the navy stated it “rejects allegations concerning the systematic abuse of detainees.” It stated every prisoner receives blankets, a mattress, adequate meals and medical remedy, if wanted.
 
Additionally in a press release to NPR, Israel’s Jail Service stated it was “not aware of” Dokhan’s and Abu Salah’s “claims” of mistreatment. “All prisoners are detained according to the law,” the assertion stated. “All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards. … Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”

Israel’s Sde Teiman facility has been the location of human rights violations, rights advocates say

Most Palestinians rounded up in Gaza are first introduced right into a navy base in southern Israel known as Sde Teiman, says Noa Sattath, govt director of the Affiliation for Civil Rights in Israel. She says a makeshift jail was constructed on the base after Oct. 7.

“It’s not even a prison in the sense that there are no cells, there are no beds, it’s just cages,” she says. Neither the jail officers nor the troopers have been skilled to carry the detainees, she says.

“In Sde Teiman, we have been hearing about the most serious violations of human rights,” she says.

Sattath’s group has been amassing testimonies from Israeli docs working at Sde Teiman, in addition to from former prisoners, in regards to the circumstances there. Some ex-prisoners reported being held in diapers, she says. Others stated they have been handcuffed in excessive stress positions, chopping off their circulation. Some wanted to have limbs amputated consequently, she says.

“Part of Israel’s international obligations is to treat detainees humanely according to international law,” she says. “And Israel’s violating that right now.”

Her group has joined with others to petition Israel’s Supreme Courtroom to shut Sde Teiman.

Naji Abbas, the director of detainee points at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, says a subject hospital was additionally erected at Sde Teiman after Oct. 7. Beginning in December, his group started gathering testimony from Israeli docs who labored at and visited the hospital.

“The doctors reported Gazan prisoners being handcuffed for weeks or months, daily beatings, amputations due to infections, and severe lack of food for the prisoners,” he says. “One of the doctors … in the end of March, sent a letter to the Israeli army, to the Minister of Health,” he says. He quotes this physician as writing, “You are making us all criminals.” NPR has not independently confirmed the letter.

The experiences of mistreatment of Gazan prisoners are paying homage to detainee abuse by U.S. troopers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail within the early 2000s.

Montell, with HaMoked, says the Oct. 7 assault left Israelis deeply shaken.

“Of course, that has created, you know, really a desire for vengeance,” she says. “And I think we see that both in the conduct of the fighting in Gaza, as well as the treatment of prisoners.”

Greater than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, in keeping with Gaza’s well being ministry. Many of the enclave’s inhabitants has been displaced by the preventing.

Israel’s Supreme Courtroom is weighing a petition to shut Sde Teiman

In mid-Might, the navy’s prime lawyer, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, stated the navy was investigating about 70 instances of suspected violations of the legal guidelines of conflict, together with at Sde Teiman.

“These investigations also address allegations raised about the incarceration conditions at Sde Teiman detention center and the deaths of detainees in IDF custody. We are treating these allegations very seriously and are taking action to probe them,” she informed an Israeli Bar Affiliation convention.

Israel’s navy and its jail service won’t publicly say what number of Palestinians have died whereas incarcerated since Oct. 7. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper experiences that investigations are at the moment happening into 48 deaths.

Israel’s Supreme Courtroom is weighing a petition by human rights teams to shut Sde Teiman. The navy has already been shifting lots of of detainees from there to different prisons as a consequence of overcrowding. Dozens of detainees who Israel deems to pose a low danger have been launched again to Gaza as a result of the prisons are operating out of room.

A type of launched was Sofian Abu Salah. He says as soon as he obtained off the Israeli navy truck in Gaza in April, his handcuffs and blindfold have been eliminated for the primary time in almost two months. It took him a number of minutes for his eyes to regulate. Abu Salah says there have been folks ready for him in Gaza. He was transferred to an ambulance.

“There was a foreign lady from the U.N. or Red Cross,” he stated. “I felt like I was going from hell to paradise when they told me that I was going home.”

NPR worldwide correspondent Jackie Northam reported from Tel Aviv. Ahmed Abuhamda reported from Cairo. Itay Stern reported from Tel Aviv, the place Shir David additionally contributed reporting.