Before releasing him, Israeli prison guards decided to give Naseem al-Radee a farewell gift. They bound his hands, placed him on the ground and beat him without mercy, saying goodbye the same way they had said hello: with their fists.
Radee’s first sight of Gaza in nearly two years was blurry; a boot to the eye left him with blurred vision two days later. Vision problems added to the laundry list of ailments he gained during his 22-month stay in an Israeli prison.
The 33-year-old government employee from Beit Lahiya was arrested by Israeli soldiers at a school-turned-displacement shelter in Gaza on 9 December 2023. He spent more than 22 months in captivity in Israeli detention centres – including 100 days in an underground cell – before being released alongside 1,700 other Palestinian detainees back to Gaza on Monday.
Like the other detainees released back to Gaza, Radee was never charged with a crime. And like many others, his detention was marked by torture, medical neglect and starvation at the hands of Israeli prison guards.
His description of his time in prison is part of what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says is a policy of abuse towards Palestinians detainees in Israeli prisons and detention centres.
The Israeli prison service and military did not immediately respond to a request for a comment, but in the past both have said that prison conditions comply with international law.
“The conditions in the prison were extremely harsh, from having our hands and feet bound to being subjected to the cruelest forms of torture,” said Radee, speaking of his time in Nafha prison in the Negev desert, the last place he was detained before being released.
The beatings were not an exception, but instead part of what he described as a scheduled regimen of abuse.
“They used teargas and rubber bullets to intimidate us, in addition to constant verbal abuse and insults. They had a strict system of repression; the electronic gate of the section would open when the soldiers entered, and they would come in with their dogs, shouting ‘on your stomach, on your stomach’, and start beating us mercilessly,” he said.
Cells were crowded, with 14 people crammed into a room that appeared to have been designed for five, he said. The unsanitary conditions led him to contract fungal and skin diseases that were not alleviated by medical treatment provided by the prison.
Mohammed al-Asaliya, a 22-year-old university student who was released from Nafha prison on Monday, contracted scabies during his time in detention.
“There was no medical care. We tried to treat ourselves by using floor disinfectant on our wounds, but it only made them worse. The mattresses were filthy, the environment unhealthy, our immunity weak, and the food contaminated,” said Asaliya, who was arrested on 20 December 2023 from a school in Jabaliya.
“There was an area they called ‘the disco’, where they played loud music nonstop for two days straight. This was one of their most notorious and painful torture methods. They also hung us on walls, sprayed us with cold air and water, and sometimes threw chilli powder on detainees,” said Asaliya.
Both men lost much of their body weight during detention. Radee entered prison weighing 93kg and left at 60kg. Asaliya’s weight was 75kg at the time of arrest and dropped to 42kg at one point during his detention.
Palestinian medical officials said many of the detainees released on Monday arrived in poor physical health.
“The signs of beating and torture were clearly visible on the prisoners’ bodies, such as bruises, fractures, wounds, marks from being dragged on the ground, and the marks of restraints that had bound their hands tightly,” said Eyad Qaddih, the director of public relations at Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, which received detainees on Monday.
He said that many of the returnees had to be transferred to the emergency room due to their ill health. In addition to physical injuries from beatings, he said prisoners appeared to have not eaten for long periods.
About 2,800 Palestinians from Gaza are detained in Israeli prisons and detention centres without charge, according to the NGO Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI).
The mass incarceration of Palestinians from Gaza without due process has been permitted by changes made to Israeli law since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants that killed about 1,200 people.
In December 2023, the Israeli parliament amended the unlawful combatants law to allow for administrative detention without charge where an officer has “reasonable grounds to believe” the person is an unlawful combatant. Administrative detention can be extended virtually indefinitely.
Israeli legal advocates say the mass incarceration of Palestinians by Israel coincides with a drastic degradation in detention conditions and that this has become a matter of policy.
“Generally, the amount and scale of torture and abuse in Israeli prisons and military camps has skyrocketed since 7 October. We see that as a part of the policy led by Israeli decision-makers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and others,” said Tal Steiner, the executive director of PCATI.
Ben-Gvir, the far-right security minister, has bragged about providing the “minimum amount of food”. “I am here to ensure that the ‘terrorists’ receive the minimum of the minimum,” he wrote in a social media post in July.
Despite the intense abuse they faced in prisons, it is in Gaza that many detainees felt they faced the worst torture.
Upon his release, Radee attempted to call his wife, only to find her phone out of service. He then learned that his wife and all but one of his children had been killed in Gaza during his detention.
“I was very happy to be released because the date coincided with my youngest daughter Saba’s third birthday on 13 October. I had planned to make her the best gift to make up for her first birthday, which we could not celebrate because the war had started,” Radee said.
“I tried to find some joy in being released on this day, but sadly, Saba went with my family, and my joy went with her,” he said.
First Appeared on
Source link
