Bodies of Returned Palestinian Hostages Show Signs Of Torture By Israeli Officials.

Palestinian Hostages Returned From The Israeli Sde Teiman Torture Dungeon Show Signs of Brutal Torture.

A new article in the Guardian reported that, “At least 135 mutilated bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel to Gaza had been held in a notorious detention centre,” referring to the brutal Israeli torture prison Sde Teiman.

The report noted that, “The director general of the health ministry, Dr Munir al-Bursh, and a spokesperson for Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where the bodies are being examined, said a document found inside each body bag indicated the bodies all came from Sde Teiman” adding that, “Palestinian detainees were held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to hospital beds and forced to wear nappies.”

The Guardian reported that, “photographs of Palestinian bodies seen by the Guardian show several of the victims blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs. One image shows a rope fastened around a man’s neck.”

The report went on to note, “Doctors in Khan Younis said official examinations and field observations ‘clearly indicate that Israel carried out acts of murder, summary executions and systematic torture against many of the Palestinians. ’ Health officials said the documented findings included “clear signs of direct gunfire at point-blank range and bodies crushed beneath Israeli tank tracks’.”

The Guardian reported that, “The body of Mahmoud Ismail Shabat, 34, from northern Gaza, bore marks of hanging around his neck, his legs crushed by tank tracks” adding that, “Palestinian doctors say the fact that many of the bodies were blindfolded and bound suggests they were tortured and then killed during their detention at Sde Teiman”.

The article quoted Shadi Abu Seido, a Palestinian journalist who was taken to Sde Teiman, saying, “They stripped me completely naked for 10 hours in the cold, I was then transferred to Sde Teiman and held there for 100 days, during which I remained handcuffed and blindfolded. Many died in detention, others lost their minds. Some had limbs amputated. They suffered sexual and physical abuse. They brought dogs that urinated on us. When I asked why I had been arrested, they answered: ‘We have killed all the journalists. They died once. But we brought you here and you will die hundreds of times.’”

One Israeli doctor from Sde Teiman admitted to the Guardian that one picture, “show the man had his hands tied, likely with zip ties. There is a change in colour between the arms and the hands at the level of the zip ties, likely indicating ischemic changes due to excessive restraints”. Adding, “This might be someone who was either injured and captured (thus died under Israeli custody) or someone who died due to injuries inflicted after his capture”.

The NGO Euro Med Monitor recorded that, “Medical examinations, forensic reports, and observations by the field team revealed conclusive evidence that many victims were killed after being detained. Their bodies bore clear marks of hanging, rope imprints around their necks, injuries from close-range gunfire, bound hands and feet with plastic restraints, and blindfolds. Some bodies were crushed under tank tracks, while others showed severe signs of physical torture, fractures, burns, and deep wounds” adding that, “the available evidence reveals a horrifying pattern of field executions and systematic torture of Palestinian detainees and prisoners, suggesting a deliberate policy aimed at inflicting the maximum possible physical and psychological suffering on those held, up to and including their killing.”

The report documented that, “Clear evidence shows that many of the victims were subjected to deliberate and brutal torture and abuse that caused extreme suffering, while several appear to have been executed after detention, constituting grave violations of international law”.

These reports back up previous evidence from reports and testimony from survivors and whistleblowers from Sde Teiman.

The United Nations report from March of this year on Israel's widespread use of sexual violence recorded that one Palestinian detainee from Sde Teiman was, “suspended from the ceiling so that only the tips of his toes touched a chair and was beaten with tools for hours” and a“metal tool was inserted in his penis repeatedly until his penis started bleeding, and he fainted”.

The report quoted the victim saying, “They took me into an interrogation room and suspended me by my arms behind my back. My toes barely touched the floor. A male guard inserted a metal stick in my penis on several occasions, about twenty times in total. I started bleeding. The pain was excruciating, but the humiliation was worse”.

The report also documented that, “In one case, a detained Palestinian man was raped after he was transferred from Ofer prison to Sde Teiman detention facility. According to an indictment submitted to an Israeli military court, the man was physically abused by five soldiers, reservists in Unit 100, during a search at Sde Teiman prison. The men, including the commander of the team, kicked the victim and hit him with a baton and tasered him in the head. A baton was also inserted in his mouth and a dog was used to intimidate the victim during the assault. The assault resulted in the fracture of several of the victim’s ribs and a punctured lung. The victim was also stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object. The victim’s rectum was raptured due to the assault, and he required surgery to the rectum. Following the assault, the victim was required to use a stoma bag due to the gravity of the injuries. A video filming the assailants was taken by a soldier.”

Other instances of sexual torture at Sde Teiman documented in the report included, “One detainee was subjected to an attempted rape with a carrot in the anus in front of the other detainees. Another detainee held in Sde Teiman reported that female soldiers had forced him and others to make sounds like a sheep, curse the Hamas leadership and the prophet Muhammad, and say ‘I am a whore’. Detainees were beaten if they did not comply. In another case, a soldier took off his trousers and pressed his crotch to a detainee’s face, saying: ‘You are my bitch. Suck my dick.’”

The UN’s inquiry into Israel’s genocide in Gaza from September of this year also documented torture used at Sde Teiman, including against children, writing:

Detainees had been blindfolded and handcuffed by Israeli security forces personnel at all times, confined to large and overcrowded makeshift cells, kept naked or near naked for days at a time and forced to kneel in stress positions for hours, while also being prohibited from speaking. They had been denied adequate access to toilets and showers, and many had been forced to wear diapers. They had been subjected to beatings, including with batons and wooden sticks, even while immobilised, and intimidation and attacks by dogs.Many detainees had been bound to a screw placed high on a wall for hours, while blindfolded and suspended with their feet touching or barely touching the ground.

In one case, a detainee had been left in that position for five to six hours as interrogators repeatedly subjected him to extreme changes in temperatures, using a strong fan and a heat lamp in alternation. The Commission also received reports of electric shock devices being used against detainees. Notably, on 16 October 2023, Israeli Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir ordered significant additional restrictions in Israel Prison Service facilities against Palestinian detainees, including food allowances.

Adding:

Detained children had been subjected to extreme violence during arrest, detention, interrogation and release .In Sde Teiman, children had been held with adults and subjected to similar mistreatment. A 15-year-old boy detained at Sde Teiman facility told the Commission that his legs had been shackled with metal chains and his hands cuffed so tightly that they had bled, yet he did not receive any medical attention. He had been repeatedly punished by being forced to stand with his hands raised for hours. He described his 23 days of detention as ‘the worst days of my life’. A 13-year-old boy told the Commission that dogs had been used against him during interrogations and that he had been placed in solitary confinement. Notably, released children have shown signs of serious physical injury, extreme psychological distress and trauma.

In the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, aired on the UK's Channel 4, Dr. Walid Khalil, a Palestinian doctor who was tortured at Sde Teiman, said, “When I arrived at Sde Teiman prison, I was in a bad way, my ribs were broken. But inside, during interrogation, they would continuously beat me. I went into a room, he took off my boxers, and put diapers on me. I was in diapers the whole time. They hung me up, everyone was hung up, blood flowing from everyone. They started torturing me, they electrocuted me (saying) ‘Say you are Hamas! You are Hamas.’ For the duration of my detention, my hands were bound all the time. Some people had their hands amputated”.

Another Palestinian doctor, Saeed Marouf, who was taken to Sde Teiman, said, “He’d tell us to sit on our knees for the whole day, ‘sit on your knees.’ You can bear it for half an hour, maybe two, but not 40 or 50 days or two months, it destroys you. We were blindfolded and handcuffed the whole time, it’s very difficult,” and Abu Ajwa a third Palestinian doctor, released from Sde Teiman said, “One of the interrogators would bring the toilet cleaning brush and tell me ‘I want to brush your teeth with it’ And he broke my front teeth here. Another interrogator got some pliers and pulled my fingernail out. Some (Israeli) paramedics, especially the doctors, were especially violent towards us. I experienced this myself: On one occasion, due to the pain, I was not able to move at all. I asked for the doctor again. The doctor came and he literally told me ‘you’re a criminal and you have to die’. He then started to hit me on my legs. Then he said, ‘If you ask for me again, I am going to end your life.’”

Dr. Khlaed Hamouda testified in the documentary that he saw Adnan al-Bursh, the top surgeon at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, being tortured to death at Sde Teiman, saying, “I immediately noticed him (Dr. Adnan al-Bursh) , he was with a group of doctors, it was clear that he had been beaten and tortured, so much so that I used to take him to the toilet and bring him back. He told me that he was assaulted on his way here from the hospital, likely in similar condition to when I was detained and repeatedly beaten. I believed that Dr. Adnan was treated differently from the other detainees and even doctors, maybe because he was the head orthopedic at Al Shifa hospital. I don’t like words like died he was murdered, he was killed. In one way or another, it was the result of torture”.

Israeli whistleblowers interviewed within the documentary admitted to the use of torture against Palestinians at Sde Teiman, with one saying, “There were a lot of detainees that were known to be detained from the hospitals in Gaza, and the main reason I was told that they were detained is that they were possibly witnesses to hostages either being transported to places or had given care to hostages in Gaza” adding, “one of the soldiers who had beaten a detainee, he wouldn’t shut up about it, and I remember the commander being in on it and showing his respect for that. In those sorts of circles, people who guard the detainees sort of see themselves as fighters or something. It was shocking, I’m deeply ashamed”.

Another whistleblower interviewed in the documentary said, “I remember at least one case when a very painful procedure was done and the patient gave no consent. No painkillers were administered to him around that procedure, and I was there. I saw that happening, and I saw him screaming, and I saw no one stopping it. I think that was retribution; that was a way to inflict pain. I don’t even think that in the Israeli society, there is a need for a cover-up these days, you can do almost whatever you want when it comes to Gazans, honestly, I think that is how Israeli society has been dehumanizing Palestinians for years”.

Most Palestinians brought to and tortured at Sde Teiman were not members of Hamas but civilians who got in the way of Israel’s genocide, whether it be journalists documenting their war crimes, or doctors treating and saving victims of the genocide.

As the Guardian documented, one Israeli doctor admitted that, “the military had no proof that detainees were all members of Hamas, with some inmates repeatedly asking why they were there”.

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