GENEVA: According to information released by the UN on Wednesday, Palestinians who were detained by Israel during the Gaza battle were mainly kept in secret and in certain cases were exposed to treatment that may have qualified as torture.
The OHCHR UN human rights office reported in a report that thousands of Palestinians, including medical personnel, patients, residents, and captured combatants, had been transferred from Gaza to Israel following the Hamas attacks on October 7. These individuals were “usually shackled and blindfolded.” It also stated that thousands more people were held in Israel and the West Bank.
“They have typically been held in secret, without access to a lawyer, a reason for their detention, or a meaningful judicial review,” according to OHCHR.
The report was made public the day after troops detained by Israel’s military police were questioned about allegations they had abused a Palestinian inmate sexually. Since the start of the Gaza conflict, the investigation concluded that at least 53 detainees from Gaza and the West Bank have died in Israeli custody.
UN rights official Volker Turk stated during testimony for the report that Israel had subjected inmates to “a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees.”
Report period: October 7–June 30. According to OHCHR, it mainly depends on data acquired from interviews with freed Palestinian prisoners as well as other victims and witnesses of abuses.
Since October 7, Israel and Palestinian armed groups have “committed gross violations and abuses… of the rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture and other ill-treatment,” according to the report, which stated that there were “reasonable grounds to believe.” They warned that the acts might qualify as war crimes and mentioned the use of “rape and other forms of sexual violence.”
The OHCHR asked all parties to “immediately end all forms of arbitrary detention, including the holding of prisoners,” in addition to demanding an end to the abuses. Turk demanded the immediate release of all detainees in Gaza and the liberation of all Palestinians who Israel had arbitrarily jailed.
According to Turk, “long-term, secret incommunicado detention may also be torture.”
“Smoldered with tobacco”
According to the study, the majority of Palestinians incarcerated since October 7 have been imprisoned “without charges or trial.” Treatment “including severe beatings, electrocution, being forced to remain in stress positions for prolonged periods of time, or waterboarding” was recorded by a number of released Palestinians.
According to the study, captives were “given hallucinogenic pills and burned with cigarettes as a form of blackmail.” Numerous investigations conducted by human rights organizations and UN agencies have denounced the state of Israeli prisons and the way Hamas treats its prisoners.
This month, Amnesty International reported that it has recorded 27 instances of Palestinians, including a 14-year-old child and five women, who were imprisoned by Israel “for up to four and a half months” without being allowed to communicate with their relatives.
About 9,600 Palestinians are presently detained in Israeli jails, including hundreds in administrative detention, where they can be detained indefinitely without being charged, according to the Prisoners Club, a Palestinian rights advocacy group.
