‘New Gitmo': Rights group urges probe into Israel’s starving, murdering Gaza abductees

A Geneva-based rights group has called for an urgent international investigation into torture and murder of Palestinian abductees held in Israel’s “Guantanamo-like” jails.

In a statement released on Monday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it had gathered testimonies confirming recent reports in Israeli media about the regime’s field execution of the Gaza abductees.

The Sde Teman Israeli army camp has been turned into “a new Guantanamo-like prison,” where detainees lose their lives after being subjected to extreme torture and mistreatment, it added.

The Israeli army uses open-air chicken coops to house the inmates and withhold food or drink for long periods of time.

The rights group also noted that the Palestinians held in Sde Teman are caged in inhumane conditions, blindfolded and subjected to harsh interrogations with their hands tied.

It further said that turning on lights at night, as well as barring the abductees from using phones and meeting lawyers and representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are among the torture tactics being used at the Israeli jail.

The testimonies affirm that multiple elderly abductees endured cruel beatings and humiliating treatment, Euro-Med said.

One of the released detainees, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he witnessed Israeli soldiers directly shooting and killing five abductees in separate incidents.

Earlier, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the deaths of six Palestinians in Israeli prisons since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing bloody war on Gaza.

Despite evidence of violence preceding the inmates’ death or medical neglect – their cause of death was not established, according to the report.

It added that Just 71 out of 500 Palestinians arrested during the Gaza war have been brought before Israeli courts, and that the remaining detainees have been moved to prisons run by the Israeli Prison Service or to detention facilities run by the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet.

Previously, the Euro-Med field teams documented the detention of more than 1,200 Palestinian civilians in random Israeli arrest campaigns across Gaza during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged territory.

The abductees were subjected to all forms of beatings and ill-treatment during their detention and purposefully left blindfolded, nearly nude, and kneeling on the ground upon their release.

Israel waged the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the aggression against Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,453 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 52,286 others.

Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.

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