CNN Reporting: ‘They told me to strip.’ Former Palestinian detainee says he was sexually abused in an Israeli prison

CNN is the latest Western outlets, including the Washington Post, the BBC, and New York Times, to report on Israel's torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees. For months, human rights organizations, UN officials, and NGOs reported on abusive treatment of Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza. The US government continue to protect the government of Israel by rejecting calls for independent investigations. CNN starts it reporting by recounting the story of one Palestinian detainee.

Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison.

“They told me to strip,” the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his eight months in Israeli detention. “That’s when I knew I was beginning my journey to hell.”

An Israeli airstrike hit Salem’s home in the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza on December 8, killing eight of his relatives and injuring his wife and two of his three children, Salem told CNN. Four days later, while staying with his children who were being treated in the intensive care unit of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, he was arrested by Israeli troops during a raid, he said.

Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center

“I was confused. Why was I arrested? I have nothing to do with resistance groups … There were no accusations against me,” Salem told CNN in an interview at a displacement camp in Al-Mawasi, southern Gaza. “I am a barber.”

He and other Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia were handcuffed, blindfolded, and transported on trucks “like animals,” he recalled.

No one heard from him for eight months.

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Taunted with pictures of exhumed bodies

Salem said an interrogator showed him a picture of what he was led to believe were exhumed remains of six family members he had buried in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Salem said the interrogator taunted him, making him count six bodies in the picture.

“On what grounds do you take away bodies and desecrate them?” Salem recalled telling the interrogator. “These bodies are ours. We need to bury them.”

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‘Systematic policies’

Mishreqi said that Salem was detained under Israel’s controversial Unlawful Combatants Law, which rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has said “strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights.”