More details emerge of Israel’s ‘brutal’ treatment of Palestinian detainees

Dozens of Palestinian prisoners are being held indefinitely successful an underground Israeli detention facility, deprived of sunlight and subjected to utmost violence, Palestinian lawyers say, arsenic much reports of maltreatment look from the devastation of Israel’s warfare connected Gaza.

Lawyers for Palestinians held astatine Rakevet, an underground helping of the Ramla (Nitzan) situation analyzable successful cardinal Israel, said their clients person been assaulted, starved, and denied aesculapian attraction contempt superior injuries.

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“When the prisoners get for the interrogation [with their lawyer], their faces amusement what they’ve endured,” lawyer Nadia Daqqa told Al Jazeera. “Particularly successful this prison, prisoners are acrophobic to talk. The [interview] country is 1 quadrate metre and the guards garbage to leave.”

Despite that, Daqqa and different lawyers person collected testimonials from prisoners held astatine Rakevet.

One detainee, referred to by the initials YH, had a breached jaw, enarthrosis and ribs, yet had received nary aesculapian treatment. Another, known arsenic KHD, said Israeli situation guards punish the prisoners “by breaking their thumbs”.

The reports are the latest to item wide-scale abuse successful Israel’s situation system, arsenic the state has ramped up its arrests of Palestinians amid its two-year genocidal warfare connected the Gaza Strip.

More than 9,200 Palestinians are presently detained successful Israeli prisons, according to the latest figures from Palestinian captive rights radical Addameer. The bulk are successful what’s known arsenic administrative detention, held without complaint oregon trial.

Scores of detainees from Gaza person besides been held successful a notorious Israeli subject detention campy known arsenic Sde Teiman, wherever reports of killings, torture and intersexual violence, including rape, person been rife since the Gaza warfare began successful October 2023.

While the Israeli authorities person denied allegations of abuse, Palestinian prisoners who were precocious released from the facilities arsenic portion of past month’s Gaza ceasefire woody described harrowing abuses.

The bodies of slain Palestinian detainees returned to the coastal Palestinian enclave nether the ceasefire statement besides showed signs of torture, mutilation and execution, with immoderate returned with ropes inactive tied astir their necks.

Several quality rights groups successful Israel person described the country’s prisons and detention facilities arsenic a signifier of torture and cruel and antithetic punishment.

“Human rights organizations documented wide abuses, including carnal beatings, intersexual violence, harassment, and threats – pointing to systemic and deliberate mistreatment,” the Public Committee Against Torture successful Israel (PCATI) said successful June.

The question of maltreatment besides comes amid a propulsion from wrong Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right authorities to harden its policies towards Palestinian detainees.

Earlier this week, the Israeli parliament advanced a bill that would enforce the decease punishment for alleged “terrorism” offences based connected “racist” motives against Israelis.

The move, which rights groups person condemned and said would exclusively people Palestinians, has been championed by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Attacks by Israeli settlers connected Palestinian civilians, which person been burgeoning in the occupied West Bank and are carried retired with impunity and often backed by the Israeli military, would not apply.

“The enactment of a caller instrumentality imposing the decease punishment exclusively against Palestinians marks a caller occurrence successful the ongoing bid of oppression and constitutes a sedate escalation successful Israel’s wide violations against Palestinians, including hundreds of extrajudicial executions,” Addameer said connected November 9.

Basil Farraj, a prof astatine Birzeit University successful the occupied West Bank, said the underground Rakevet installation is conscionable 1 portion of this wider strategy of abuse.

“This concealed centre is successful information a grounds of the broader improvement of Israeli carcerality, wherever Palestinians proceed to beryllium treated successful a convulsive and, successful fact, an highly brutal mode that denies and negates each of their rights,” Farraj told Al Jazeera.

He explained that galore Palestinians person been arrested nether Israel’s alleged “unlawful combatants” law, which allows the authorities to detain them indefinitely connected information grounds without having to beryllium immoderate allegations.

“The information that you are held without proceedings adds different furniture of intelligence maltreatment and intelligence torture,” Farraj said. “Not knowing wherefore you are being arrested … adds to these layers of unit and torture that Israel has entrenched implicit the past 2 years.”