{"id":6845,"date":"2024-08-25T11:41:28","date_gmt":"2024-08-25T11:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/25\/they-told-me-to-strip-former-palestinian-detainee-says-he-was-sexually-abused-in-an-israeli-prison\/"},"modified":"2024-08-25T11:41:28","modified_gmt":"2024-08-25T11:41:28","slug":"they-told-me-to-strip-former-palestinian-detainee-says-he-was-sexually-abused-in-an-israeli-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/25\/they-told-me-to-strip-former-palestinian-detainee-says-he-was-sexually-abused-in-an-israeli-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They told me to strip.\u2019 Former Palestinian detainee says he was sexually abused in an Israeli prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual violence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel\u2019s notorious Sde Teiman prison. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me to strip,\u201d the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his eight months in Israeli detention. \u201cThat\u2019s when I knew I was beginning my journey to hell.\u201d <\/p>\n

He and other Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia were handcuffed, blindfolded, and transported on trucks \u201clike animals,\u201d he recalled. <\/p>\n

No one heard from him for eight months. <\/p>\n

On May 23, Saja Mishreqi, a lawyer at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), who represented Salem, was informed by the Israeli Supreme Court that he was in Ktzi\u2019ot Prison, a detention facility in the Negev run by the Israel Prison Service (IPS). He was eventually released without charge on August 1. <\/p>\n

Ordered to strip naked<\/h2>\n

During interrogations, Salem said, he would be asked: \u201cWhere are the hostages? Where are Hamas\u2019 weapons? Are you Hamas? Are you Qassam (Hamas\u2019 military wing)? Are you Islamic Jihad?\u201d <\/p>\n

Salem alleges to have been beaten, verbally abused, had hot water poured on him, and told by soldiers that the rest of his family had been killed. <\/p>\n

But the worst part, he said, was the sexual abuse. <\/p>\n

Salem said much of prisoners\u2019 time in detention was spent in their underwear, but before each interrogation session, soldiers would order him to strip naked. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey would bring the metal detector and run it all over our bodies, then they would hover it over private parts and hit me there,\u201d he said. As he crouched in pain, naked, with five or six soldiers looking, he said he felt the troops violate him from behind. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the pain, I would lean forward. Then suddenly, they would push it (a baton) into my butt,\u201d he said. \u201cInside.\u201d <\/p>\n

After interrogation, he was given only \u201cseconds\u201d to put his underwear back on, he said, adding that any perceived delay in doing so would result in another beating from the soldiers. <\/p>\n

The IDF added that it \u201ccannot address the conditions of his arrest and detention for most of that period,\u201d noting that misconduct during detention is \u201ccontrary to the law and IDF orders, and is therefore strictly prohibited.\u201d <\/p>\n

Salem was released to the Gaza Strip on August 1 after an assessment found that releasing him wouldn\u2019t pose a risk to national security, the IDF said, adding that he was brought before a judge in a district court for a judicial review during his detention. <\/p>\n

Taunted with pictures of exhumed bodies <\/p>\n

Salem said an interrogator showed him a picture of what he was led to believe were exhumed remains of six family members he had buried in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Salem said the interrogator taunted him, making him count six bodies in the picture. <\/p>\n

\u201cOn what grounds do you take away bodies and desecrate them?\u201d Salem recalled telling the interrogator. \u201cThese bodies are ours. We need to bury them.\u201d <\/p>\n

The interrogator responded that the bodies \u201cmight be hostages\u201d abducted by Hamas on October 7, to which Salem said he responded, crying: \u201cMy nephews, are they hostages? Five years old?\u201d <\/p>\n

More than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 injured in Israel\u2019s assault on the strip, according to Gaza\u2019s health ministry. <\/p>\n

Leaked surveillance footage last month from the Sde Teiman prison provided a rare glimpse into the facility. <\/p>\n

CCTV video obtained by Israel\u2019s Channel 12 showed Israeli soldiers selecting one of more than two dozen Palestinian detainees lying on the ground. Behind a wall of shields obstructing the view of security cameras, the soldiers allegedly sodomize the detainee. The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries to his rectum, according to Israeli non-profit organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Israeli military has declined to comment on the video. <\/p>\n

Shortly after the incident, 10 Israeli soldiers were arrested over the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the facility, according to IDF. Five have so far been released, and five are under house arrest. <\/p>\n

\u2018Systematic policies\u2019<\/h2>\n

Mishreqi said that Salem was detained under Israel\u2019s controversial Unlawful Combatants Law, which rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has said \u201cstrips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights.\u201d <\/p>\n

The law permits the military to detain people for up to 30 days without a detention order, after which they must be transferred to prison, according to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization (NGO). Over 4,000 Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been detained by Israel since the war began, PCATI said in a report last month, adding that the law deprives detainees of their rights as prisoners of war and the protections for civilian populations under humanitarian law in occupied territories. <\/p>\n

As of April, more than 9,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli prisons, including more than 3,500 without charge, according to Addameer Prisoner\u2019s Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO. The figure doesn\u2019t include detainees from Gaza, the group said. <\/p>\n

Salem is one of many former detainees who have recalled harrowing stories from their time in Israeli prisons to human rights groups and news outlets. Their testimonies have led to calls for reforms across all of Israel\u2019s prisons. <\/p>\n

Israel has greatly reduced the number of people being held at Sde Teiman in the wake of calls for its closure. In June, a state attorney told Israel\u2019s Supreme Court that hundreds of Palestinian detainees have been transferred out of the facility. <\/p>\n

A report published by Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem this month documented \u201cabuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians\u201d held in Israeli custody since October 7. The report, which collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians, showed \u201cthe rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy.\u201d The IDF has repeatedly denied allegations of systematic abuse. <\/p>\n

Salem said there were some 150 detainees with him in the second facility where he was held. <\/p>\n

On the day of his release, Salem said he was taken to the Gaza border by the IDF but was told he couldn\u2019t return to his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. He is now living in a displacement camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. <\/p>\n

He has moved from detention tents to displacement tents throughout his ordeal, he said, and the memories of the abuse he said he experienced continue to live with him. <\/p>\n

He has yet to reunite with his wife and children, who remain in northern Gaza, and can only communicate with them by phone. Two of his children require surgeries for injuries sustained in the Israeli airstrike, he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual violence. Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel\u2019s notorious Sde Teiman prison. \u201cThey told me to strip,\u201d the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}