Gazan detainees face torture, rape in Israeli prisons: Lawyer

By Qais Abu Samra

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) - A Palestinian lawyer shared harrowing accounts of torture against detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons.

Khaled Mahajna, a lawyer with the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, said at a press conference that he visited two Gazan detainees on Sunday in Ofer Prison near Ramallah in the West Bank

One of the two detainees, Mohammad Arab, a journalist, detailed his experience under interrogation at the Sde Teiman camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel, where he was questioned about a previous visit by his lawyer and threatened with punishment for disclosing details.

Arab described witnessing the rape of Gazan detainees, including one who was stripped naked. This detainee remains in critical physical and mental condition.

Another detainee was also stripped naked, electrocuted, and subjected to sexual abuse.

Mahajna said detainees were being forced to lie on the ground with their hands bound behind their heads while police dogs attacked them.

According to the lawyer, around 100 other detainees were transferred from the Sde Teiman camp to Ofer Prison while blindfolded, leading them to believe they were taken to a camp near Gaza.

More than 9,000 Palestinian detainees are held in Israeli jails, according to the Israel Prison Service.

Since launching a ground offensive in Gaza on Oct. 27, 2023, the Israeli army has arrested thousands of Palestinians, including women and children. Only a small number have been released, while the fate of the others remains unknown amid reports of systematic torture.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

Nearly 38,700 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 89,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over nine months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio