Israel's Guantánamo: Euro-Med Monitor calls for international probe into Israel’s torture and murder of Gaza detainees

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, in a report today, Monday, indicated that the testimonies it collected were consistent with what was revealed by the Hebrew newspaper “Haaretz” regarding field execution crimes carried out against detainees, while others died as a result of severe torture and ill-treatment during their detention in a military camp known as “Sde Teman”, located Between the cities of Beersheba and Gaza in the south.

The report stated that the aforementioned camp has been transformed into a new Guantánamo prison, where detainees are held in very harsh conditions, inside places resembling chicken cages in the open and without food or drink for a long period of time.

The age groups of detainees in the aforementioned camp range from minors to the elderly, and they are interrogated while blindfolded and with their hands tied for most of the day in fenced compounds. According to the testimonies, during the night hours, the lights are on and shined strongly on them with the aim of exhausting and torturing them.

According to testimonies collected by Euro-Med from detainees who were released from the aforementioned Israeli camp, they were subjected to multiple types of torture and ill-treatment, were prevented from using phones, and did not have the opportunity to meet with lawyers or visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

They confirmed the presence of elderly detainees who were subjected to severe beatings and humiliating treatment, in addition to the handcuffing of the hands and feet of the detainees on the bus during their transfer and their detention without water or food while they were shackled and blindfolded, while anyone who tried to ask for something was met with violence and insults.

One of the released detainees (who requested that his name not be mentioned for fear of retaliation) said that he witnessed Israeli soldiers directly shooting five detainees and killing them in separate cases.

For its part, Haaretz reported on the death of two detainees from the Gaza Strip during their detention in an Israeli army camp, which did not publish a report about their deaths, as is customary in the case of the death of detainees in occupation prisons.

The newspaper reported that one of the detainees, a former worker from the Gaza Strip inside the occupying entity, requested medical attention before his death, but the army ignored this and continued to detain him in harsh conditions, which led to his death.

Haaretz indicated that the Israeli occupation army brought only 71 out of more than 500 detainees before the Israeli courts, and some of them were transferred to prisons affiliated with the Israeli Prison Service or to interrogation centers of the Israeli General Security Service (Shin Bet).

On November 3, the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory documented the death of worker Mansour Nabhan Muhammad Warsh, after being detained for 24 days. It was found that his body was full of bruises and traces of handcuffing, which led to his death from a heart attack.

On the 7th of the same month, the death of worker Majed Ahmed Zaqul (32 years old) was announced after he was detained in the Israeli Ofer Prison and subjected to severe torture. The fate of hundreds of other Gaza Strip workers remains unknown.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory documented that the Israeli occupation army launched random arrest campaigns that targeted more than 1,200 Palestinian civilians from different areas of the Gaza Strip after storming residential homes and schools that turned into shelter centers for thousands of displaced people.

Immediately after their arrest, the Israeli occupation army strips the detainees of their clothes, handcuffs them, and forces them to sit on their knees in open areas, while various forms of beating, harassment, and deprivation of basic needs are practiced against them.

Euro-Med reported that it has not been able to confirm cases of arrest of Palestinian militants until this moment, either because the Israeli occupation army did not announce the identities of the detainees or because none of them were captured, or as a result of the people’s unwillingness to report such cases.

He pointed out that the Israeli occupation army deliberately published video clips and pictures that were shocking and degrading to the human dignity of Palestinian detainees while they were almost naked and blindfolded, kneeling on the ground guarded by Israeli soldiers, or being taken in military buses to unknown places.

The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor received testimonies from released detainees stating that the Israeli occupation army forced some detainees to carry weapons for the purpose of taking pictures of them and marketing the justification for the arrest campaign and the torture, severe beatings and ill-treatment it included.

He pointed out that the random arrest campaigns launched by the Israeli occupation army targeted doctors, nurses, journalists, and elderly people, as well as dozens of women, including Hadeel Youssef Issa Al-Dahdouh, who appeared in a photo in which she was taken into a truck with a group of naked men in an inhumane scene.

In this regard, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor urged the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to pressure the Israeli authorities to reveal the fate of detainees from the Gaza Strip, release them, and investigate the grave violations they were subjected to.