Amnesty International on Thursday published a report denouncing torture and incommunicado detention of Palestinians by Israel and called on the authorities to “immediately” release those arbitrarily detained.
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“Israeli authorities must end indefinite incommunicado detention of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip“without charge or trial, under the Unlawful Combatants Act, in flagrant violation of international law,” the organization demanded in a press release.
The army invoked the law, enacted in 2002, for the first time in five years to arrest suspected participants in the 7 October attacks, but soon after expanded its use “to detain Palestinians in Gaza en masse without charge or trial,” the organisation said.
The agency interviewed 27 people who were detained and later released – five women, 21 men and a 14-year-old teenager – and All of them reported having been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.
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Detained incommunicado
Under the Unlawful Combatants Detention Act, the Army is not required to issue an arrest warrant against the individual, who is denied access to legal counsel for up to 90 days, and is also codified as incommunicado detention, which facilitates torture.
Detainees are not provided with evidence justifying their arrest, nor is their legal counsel, leading many to remain in prison for months “without the slightest idea” of why they are being held – a violation of international law. “completely isolated from their families and loved ones, and with no means of challenging the reasons for their detention,” according to Amnesty International.
They are also unable to communicate with their families, as one health worker told the organisation, saying not knowing whether his family was alive or dead in Gaza was “even worse than torture and hunger”.
In December, Israel amended the law to extend the time Palestinians can be held without a warrant from the original 96 hours (extendable up to seven days) to a maximum of 45 days. The maximum term of imprisonment until appearing before a judicial authority was reduced from 14 to 75 days, and imprisonment without legal assistance was reduced from 21 days to 6 months, later reduced to 3.
Torture against Palestinian prisoners
Of those interviewed, eight showed marks and bruises consistent with torture, and two people’s medical reports corroborated the accounts of torture.
Amnesty International has also verified five videos of mass arrests, some of which have shown people stripped to their underwear after being arrested in northern Gaza and Khan Yunis (south).
Women and children in Gaza City begin evacuating following Israel’s warning of a ground invasion in northern Gaza.
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According to the organization“forced public nudity for prolonged periods violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and constitutes sexual violence.”
Some of the most explicit cases were recorded in Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel. Prisoners held there reported being forced to remain in stress positions for hours, and forbidden from speaking to other inmates or raising their heads.
A 14-year-old boy from Jabalia (northern Gaza) spent 24 days in this prison, locked in a barrack with at least 100 adult detainees.
The minor reported having been kicked and punched in the neck, and that his captors had “repeatedly burned him with cigarette butts,” something the organization confirmed by observing burns and bruises when interviewing him.
Women in detention
Among those interviewed were five women who had been held incommunicado for more than 50 days.
One of them recounted how, after three weeks in Damon prison in northern Israel, she was told she was going to be released. “They handcuffed her, blindfolded her, shackled her feet and took her to another place.”
There, the soldiers tore her clothes with a knife and subjected her to “a violent strip search,” before taking her for another 18 days to Anatot prison (near Jerusalem).
EFE
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