Iron cage and electric shocks: Palestinians held in Gaza narrate tales of torture

By Press TV Staff Writer

A video clip of a young Palestinian man, stripped and handcuffed, from the Gaza Strip has been trending on social media in recent days, showing an Israeli soldier interrogating him.

His hands are tied behind his back while blood is oozing from a wound in his leg, triggering anger and outrage from netizens, who saw it as a clear case of torture and ill-treatment.

Testimonies from people who were recently imprisoned by the Israeli regime reveal patterns of custodial torture and severe physical and mental abuse amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

The practice of illegally arresting Palestinians and shifting them to undisclosed locations has dramatically picked up since October 7, when the Israeli regime launched its indiscriminate bombing of the besieged territory.

More recently, on Monday, Dr. Haider Al-Qaddura, general manager of Al-Amal Hospital, along with the hospital’s administrative director, Maher Atallah, was bundled away and taken to an undisclosed location. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

According to sources, most of those targeted are medical professionals and journalists.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the duo were “summoned” by the regime officials and taken to an “unknown location.”

“This follows the ICRC informing PRCS of occupation approval for a safe passage, enabling displaced individuals to leave Al-Amal Hospital and PRCS headquarters towards Mawasi in KhanYunis. Hundreds have started leaving after a two-week siege,” the organization noted.

Al-Qaddura also serves on the executive committee of the PRCS and has been active since October 7 tending to those injured in the Israeli aggression.

Almost 28,000 have been killed in Gaza since October 7, most of them children and women.

Said Abdulrahman Maarouf, a pediatrician at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City who now works at Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah City, was released by the regime forces on Thursday after almost two months.

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He was quoted as saying that the regime forces tortured him following his arrest from inside the hospital, and remained in Israeli custody “under severe torture and starvation.”

“I did not commit any crime. My weapons are my pen, notebook and stethoscope. I did not leave the hospital, I was treating children inside,” Maarouf said, as cited by Al-Jazeera.

“I lost more than 25kg in 45 days. I lost my balance, I lost my focus, and I lost all feeling. We were shackled for 45 days, handcuffed for 45 days.”

Many Palestinian journalists have also been arrested in recent weeks from different parts of southern Gaza and subjected to horrendous torture in custody.

Diaa Al-Kahlout, a Palestinian journalist, spoke about the torture and abuse she faced during her 33 days in Israeli custody.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), he was denied medical treatment despite suffering from a herniated disk and was subjected to physical and psychological violence.

The torture methods included six hours of Shabeh, a notorious torture practice in which a person is hung from the ceiling from his wrists so that his toes come off the ground.

“For 25 consecutive days, we were forced to stay in the kneeling position from approximately 4:00 am to 11:00 pm and they counted us several times,” he wrote in a testimony published by PCHR.

“The soldiers put me in the corner of a corridor and tied my feet and hands behind my back with iron handcuffs. The soldiers then hung me in the “shabeh” position with the sun above my head.”

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Among those detainees, he said, was an old Palestinian man with Alzheimer's, who was also subjected to physical and mental torture by the regime forces.

Kahlout is a resident of the al-Karamah neighborhood in Jabalia and is married with five children.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, in the latest report, also revealed new testimonies of brutal torture and sexual harassment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

“We received testimonies from female detainees who were subjected to direct sexual harassment by soldiers of the occupation army and were forced to strip naked and remove their hijab,” said the rights group.

“The soldiers made threats of rape and indecent assault against female detainees and their families as part of the process of torture and blackmail, it added.

Euro-Med Monitor further stated that the Israeli army and Shin Bet treated Palestinian detainees as “non-human animals”, according to testimonies received by the group.

The Sde Teman army camp, situated between Beersheba and Gaza, has been turned into a Guantánamo-like prison with detainees “in very harsh conditions akin to open-air chicken cages.”

One of those released lately said they are not held under legal detention circumstances and are forced to remain inside iron cages despite harsh weather, enduring severe beatings, electric shock torture, purposeful burning with cigarette butts and other forms of torture.

Expressing alarm over the abuse of Palestinian detainees, the Hamas resistance group in a statement called on human rights and international bodies to take note of the testimonies.

These testimonies, Hamas noted, constitute new evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli regime and require legal pursuit before international courts.

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