Israel: Palestinians from Gaza held in secret detention describe torture - new testimonies

A paediatrician held at notorious Sde Teiman camp describes being kept blindfolded and handcuffed for weeks, being starved and repeatedly beaten 

Fourteen-year-old boy was punched and repeatedly burnt with cigarette butts, while another former detainee described attacks by dogs as punishment for talking

Woman describes horror at being made to stand in a ditch and be told her husband had been executed 

‘Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole’ - Agnès Callamard  

The Israeli authorities must end their indefinite incommunicado detention of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip - in flagrant violation of international law - under the country’s Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law, said Amnesty International today. 

Amnesty has documented the cases of 27 Palestinian former detainees - 21 men, five women and a 14-year-old boy - who were detained for periods of up to four-and-a-half months without access to their lawyers or contact with their families. 

Amnesty also interviewed four family members of civilians detained for up to seven months whose whereabouts are yet to be disclosed by the Israeli authorities, and two lawyers who recently managed to meet with detainees.  

The Israeli military seized the 27 people from locations across Gaza including Gaza City, Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Khan Younis, with the detainees rounded up at schools housing internally-displaced people, during raids on homes and hospitals, and at newly-installed checkpoints. The detainees were then transferred to Israel and held for periods ranging from two weeks to up to 140 days in military or Israeli Prison Service-run detention facilities. 

Those detained included doctors taken into custody at hospitals for refusing to abandon their patients, mothers separated from their infants while trying to cross the so-called “safe corridor” from northern Gaza to the south, and human rights defenders, UN workers, journalists and other civilians. 

All those interviewed by Amnesty said that during their incommunicado detention - which in some cases amounted to enforced disappearance - the Israeli military, intelligence and police forces subjected them to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (see ‘Torture and other ill-treatment’ section below). 

The Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law grants the Israeli military sweeping powers to detain anyone from Gaza they suspect of engaging in hostilities against Israel or of posing a threat to state security for indefinitely-renewable periods without having to produce evidence. The Israeli Prison Service has told the Israeli NGO HaMoked that - as of 1 July - 1,402 Palestinians were detained under the law. This number excluded those held for an initial 45-day period without a formal order.

Amnesty is calling for all detainees held under the Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law, including suspected members of armed groups, to be treated humanely and given access to lawyers and international monitoring bodies such as the Red Cross. Those suspected of responsibility for crimes under international law must be tried in line with international fair trial standards, while all civilians detained arbitrarily without charge or trial must be immediately released.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:

“Our documentation illustrates how the Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole for prolonged periods without producing any evidence that they pose a security threat and without minimum due process. 

“The Israeli authorities must immediately repeal this law and release those arbitrarily detained under it.

“Torture and other ill-treatment including sexual violence are war crimes - these allegations must be independently investigated by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor’s office. 

“The Israeli authorities must also grant immediate and unrestricted access to all places of detention to independent monitors - access that has been denied since 7 October.”

Torture at Sde Teiman military detention camp 

The 27 released detainees who were interviewed by Amnesty consistently described being subjected to torture. Amnesty observed marks and bruises consistent with torture on at least eight detainees interviewed in person and also reviewed medical reports of two detainees corroborating their accounts of torture. Amnesty also verified and geolocated at least five videos of mass arrests including of detainees filmed while stripped to their underwear after being detained in northern Gaza and in Khan Younis. Public forced nudity for long durations violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and amounts to sexual violence.

Those held at the notorious Sde Teiman military detention camp, near Beersheba in southern Israel, said they were blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire time they were held there. They described being forced to remain in stress positions for hours and being prevented from talking to one another or raising their heads. These accounts are consistent with the findings of other human rights organisations and UN bodies, as well as numerous reports based on accounts of whistleblowers and released detainees. 

One detainee who was released in June after 27 days during which he was detained in a barracks with at least 120 others, told Amnesty they would be beaten by the military or sent to be attacked by dogs simply for talking to another prisoner, raising their head or changing position. 

Said Maarouf - a 57-year-old paediatrician who was detained by the Israeli military during a raid on al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City in December and detained for 45 days at Sde Teiman - told Amnesty that guards kept him blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire duration of his detention, and he described being starved, repeatedly beaten and forced to crouch down on his knees for long periods. 

In another case, the Israeli army arrested a 14-year-old boy at his home in Jabalia in northern Gaza on 1 January. He was held for 24 days at Sde Teiman with at least 100 adult detainees in one barracks. He told Amnesty that military interrogators subjected him to torture, including kicking him and punching him in the neck and head. He said he was also repeatedly burnt with cigarette butts. Signs of cigarettes burns and bruises were visible on the boy’s body when Amnesty interviewed him on 3 February in the school where he was sheltering with other displaced families. During his detention he was not allowed to call his family or see a lawyer and was held blindfolded and handcuffed.

On 5 June, the Israeli authorities announced plans to improve detention conditions at Sde Teiman and limit the number of detainees held at the site in response to a petition from Israeli human rights organisations demanding its closure, but more than a month later little appears to have changed. The lawyer Khaled Mahajna was able to gain rare entry into Sde Teiman on 19 June. He told Amnesty that his client, Mohammed Arab, a journalist, told him he was being held with at least 100 people in the same barracks in inhumane conditions and that the detainees had seen no improvement whatsoever over the past two weeks. He also said he had been held in Sde Teiman for more than 100 days without knowing why. 

On 3 June, the Israeli military told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that it was investigating the deaths in custody in Israel of 40 detainees, including 36 who died or were killed in the military detention facility in Sde Teiman. No indictments have yet been filed. This number does not include detainees who died or were killed while in the custody of the Israeli Prison Service.

Women detainees 

Among the detainees interviewed by Amnesty were five women all of whom had been detained incommunicado for more than 50 days. They were first held in a women-only camp at the Anatot military detention centre in an illegal Israeli settlement near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, then in Damon prison for women in northern Israel under the control of the Israeli Prison Service. None of the five was informed of the legal grounds for their arrest or brought before a judge. All describe being beaten while being transported to detention. One of the five, arrested on 6 December at her home, said she was separated from her two children- a four-year-old and a nine-month-old baby - and initially held alongside hundreds of men. She was accused of being a Hamas member, beaten, forced to remove her veil and photographed without it. She also described the torment of being subjected to the mock execution of her husband. She said:

“On the third day of detention, they put us in a ditch and started throwing sand. A soldier fired two shots in the air and said they executed my husband and I broke down and begged him to kill me too, to relieve me from the nightmare.”  

Another released detainee told Amnesty that her repeated requests for information about her children were ignored by prison guards whom she overheard laughing and mocking her. She told Amnesty that after three weeks at Damon prison she was told she would be released. She was handcuffed, blindfolded and had her feet shackled and was taken to another location. Upon arrival, instead of being released she was violently strip-searched by guards who used a large knife to rip off her clothes. She was then returned to Anatot for 18 another days. She told Amnesty that she was threatened by prison guards who said, “We will do to you what Hamas did to us, we will kidnap and rape you”. She was never informed of the reason for her detention.

She and other detainees interviewed by Amnesty said that they were dropped off near the Kerem Shalom/Karem Abu Salem crossing and had to walk for more than half an hour until they reached a Red Cross-run gathering point for released prisoners. All detainees said that all or most of their belongings were never returned to them, including their phones, jewellery and money. 

Detention of Palestinians from Gaza under the law

The Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law was originally enacted in 2002 to allow for the prolonged detention without charge or trial of two Lebanese nationals who were not under Israeli jurisdiction. It was invoked for the first time in five years following the horrific 7 October attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel. The Israeli military initially invoked the law to hold alleged participants in the 7 October attacks but shortly after expanded its use to detain Palestinians from Gaza en masse without charge or trial. The lack of due process means that both civilians and those directly engaging in hostilities have been detained under this law.

For the first 45 days of detention the military are not required to issue a detention order. The law denies detainees access to a lawyer for up to 90 days, codifying incommunicado detention, which in turn enables torture and other ill-treatment. Detainees must be brought before a judge within a maximum period of 75 days for judicial review, but judges typically rubberstamp the detention order in sham proceedings. The law does not stipulate a maximum time for detention and allows the security services to hold detainees under indefinitely renewable orders.

Evidence justifying detention is withheld both from the detainee and their lawyer. This means many of those detained are held for months without knowing why they’ve been detained, in violation of international law, completely cut off from their family and loved ones and unable to challenge the grounds of their detention. Two detainees told Amnesty they were brought before a judge twice for virtual hearings and on both occasions were unable to speak or ask questions. Instead, they were simply informed that their detention had been renewed for a further 45 days. They were never informed of the legal basis of their arrests nor of what evidence had been brought against them to justify their arrests. 

Following a petition brought before the Israeli Supreme Court by the Israeli human rights organisation HaMoked on behalf of a detained X-ray technician from Khan Younis, the state informed the court in May that lawyers can apply to visit detainees from Gaza 90 days after their detention. Only a very limited number of such applications has been approved since. In addition to being denied access to lawyers, detainees are also cut off from their families. 

Families have described to Amnesty the agony of being separated from their loved ones and living in constant fear of discovering that they died in prison. Alaa Muhanna - whose husband Ahmad Muhhana, the director of Al-Awda hospital, was detained during a raid on the hospital on 17 December - told Amnesty the only information she receives about him is from other released prisoners. She said:

“I assure the children that Ahmad is fine, that he’s coming back soon, but to live through this war, the constant displacement, the bombing and also have to fight to know where your husband is, not to hear his voice, is like a war within the war.” 

One released health worker told Amnesty that not knowing whether his family in Gaza were alive or dead while he was detained was “even worse than torture and starvation”.

In addition to the Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law, the Israeli authorities have a history of incarcerating Palestinians without charge or trial through the systematic use of administrative detention, a key feature of Israel’s overarching system of apartheid. According to HaMoked, as of 1 July the Israeli authorities were holding 3,379 people under administrative detention, the vast majority Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.