B’tselem’s report “Welcome to Hell” features the testimonies of 55 recently released Palestinian prisoners whose graphic testimonies show that conditions in prisons have deteriorated dramatically since the war in Gaza began 10 months ago.
It is the latest in a series of reports, including one from the United Nations in August, which made shocking allegations of abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
B’tselem claims that the testimonies collected by their investigators are remarkably accurate.
“They all told us the same thing,” said Yuli Novak, B’tselem’s executive director.
“Constant abuse, daily violence, physical and mental abuse, humiliation, lack of sleep, people are starving there.”
Y. Novak’s conclusion is harsh.
“The entire Israeli prison system has turned into a network of torture camps for Palestinians,” she said.
“Overcrowded, ugly cells”
After October 7 The number of Palestinians detained in the deadly attacks by Hamas, which have killed around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, has doubled to around 10,000.
Israeli prisons were quickly overcrowded. Some of them are run by the army, others by the country’s prison service. Sometimes a dozen or more inmates share cells with no more than six people.
B’tselem’s report describes overcrowded, ugly cells where some prisoners are forced to sleep on the floor, sometimes without mattresses or blankets.
Some of the prisoners were arrested immediately after the Hamas attacks. Others were arrested in the Gaza Strip at the start of the Israeli invasion or were arrested in Israel or the occupied West Bank.
Many were later released without charge.
Fir Hassan in October already in prison, he was placed under administrative detention, a measure that allows suspects to be held more or less indefinitely without charge.
Israel says the policy is necessary and consistent with international law.
Hassan says he saw with his own eyes how quickly conditions deteriorated after October 7.
“Life changed completely,” he said, “what happened is what I call a tsunami.”
Hassan has been in prison several times since the early 1990s, twice accused of being a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and most of the West.
He does not hide that he belonged to this organization in the past, saying that he was “active”.
He said he knows how difficult life in prison is, but said nothing prepared him for what happened when he was released two days after Oct. 7. officers entered his cell.
“We were brutally beaten by 20 officers, masked men who used sticks and rods, dogs and guns,” he said.
“We were handcuffed, blindfolded, brutally beaten. My face was bloody. They beat us for 50 minutes. I could see them from under the blindfold. They filmed us while beating us.”
Finally in April Hassan was released without charge, and by then he said he had lost 20 kilograms.
A video taken on the day of his release shows a thin figure.
“I spent 13 years in prison in the past,” he told B’tselem investigators later that month, “and I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
But it’s not just Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who are talking about abuse in Israeli prisons.
Israeli citizens, such as Haifa-based Israeli Arab lawyer Sari Khourieh, also say they have had similar experiences.
Last November Mr. Khourieh was held for 10 days in Megiddo prison in northern Israel. Police said two of his Facebook posts glorified the actions of Hamas, a charge quickly dismissed.
But his brief prison experience, his first, almost broke him.
“They just went crazy,” he says of the images he saw in Megiddo prison. – There were no laws. There was no order inside.”
S. Khourieh said that he managed to avoid the worst abuse. But he says he was shocked by the treatment of other inmates.
“They beat them badly for no reason,” he said. – Those guys shouted “we didn’t do anything”. You don’t need to beat us.”
After talking to other inmates, he quickly learned that what he was seeing was not normal.
“Even before October 7, as they told me, they weren’t treated the best, but after that day, everything changed.”
After a brief stint in solitary confinement, Khourieh says he heard a beaten inmate in an adjacent cell begging for medical help.
Doctors tried to revive him, but he died soon after, he said.
A UN report released two weeks ago states that “reports from the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and prisoners’ organizations indicate that since October 7 until May 15 17 Palestinians died in IPS prisons”.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military attorney on May 26. announced that it is investigating the deaths of 35 Gaza prisoners in military custody.
Months after Mr. Khourieh’s release – again without charges – the lawyer is still trying to make sense of what he saw in Megid.
“I’m Israeli… I’m a lawyer,” he told us. – I saw the world outside the prison. I’m inside now. I see another world.”
He says his faith in citizenship and the rule of law has been shattered. “After that experience, everything was ruined,” he taught.
The military said it “rejects open allegations of systematic prisoner abuse”.
“Specific complaints of ill-treatment or unsatisfactory conditions of detention are forwarded to the relevant IDF authorities and are dealt with accordingly,” the army explained.
The Prison Service said it was unaware of the claims described and to their knowledge no such incidents had occurred.
From October 7 Israel refuses to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the detained Palestinians, as required by international law.
The decision was not explained, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has often expressed displeasure at the International Committee of the Red Cross’s inability to gain access to Israeli and other hostages being held in Gaza.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accused the government of “deliberate disregard for international law”.
In early August, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners sparked a fierce public debate when far-right demonstrators, including members of the Israeli parliament, violently tried to prevent the arrest of soldiers accused of sexually abusing a female Gazan prisoner at the Sde Teiman military base.
Some of the protesters were hardline supporters of Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who heads the prison service.
Ben Gvir has often boasted that under his leadership the conditions of Palestinian prisoners have greatly deteriorated.
“I am proud that during my time in office we changed all the conditions,” he told members of Israel’s parliament during a stormy session in July.
In B’Tselem’s view, I. Ben Gvir bears a great deal of responsibility for the abuses now being reported.
“These systems have been put in the hands of the most right-wing, most racist minister Israel has ever had,” Novak said.
In her opinion, Israel’s treatment of prisoners after the traumatic October 7 events is a dangerous indicator of a nation’s moral decline.
“Trauma and anxiety are with us every day,” she says. “But to let this thing turn us into something that’s not human, I think, is tragic.”
Parents pay BBC inf.
2024-08-26 17:43:38