Ramallah, occupied West Bank – On the morning of October 8, a day after the Hamas attack, Israeli special forces units stormed the cells of Gilboa prison and violently beat the Palestinian prisoners held there.
“The revenge attack started that morning,” Salah Fateen Salah, a former prisoner released from Gilboa on October 24 after five years in prison, told Al Jazeera.
“They shouted over the loudspeakers telling all the prisoners to go into their rooms, kneel down, put their hands on their heads and turn away from the door, so you have no idea of what happens behind you when they open the door. door,” said Salah, 23.
“Then they entered and started beating people, in several rooms at once, with their hands, their feet and with batons, including metal ones,” he said. “They unleashed their dogs on us.
“They beat a prisoner who suffers from diabetes and who receives three injections a day. He was vomiting so much blood… we were afraid for two hours that he would be martyred because of the amount of blood he was vomiting,” Salah said.
Israeli forces also “cut open the forehead of another man who was my cellmate,” he said, noting “there was blood all over the prison floor.”
The beatings, Salah said, lasted several days. “They have no humanity. Those who beat the elderly and the sick have no humanity. The prison director himself threatened us with death.
Deaths in custody
Since October 7, two Palestinian prisoners have died while in Israeli custody shortly after their arrest, and at least dozens have been injured. The two men who died in custody were held without trial or charge.
Several videos have also been released in recent weeks showing Israeli soldiers beating, stomping, mistreating and humiliating detained Palestinians who were blindfolded, partially or entirely undressed and had their hands handcuffed. Many social media users said the scenes were reminiscent of torture inflicted by US forces at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in 2003.
It is therefore not surprising that the same government that tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib is funding the same tactics against Palestinians. It’s disgusting.
CEASE FIRE NOW! END US MILITARY FUNDING TO ISRAEL NOW!
– Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 31, 2023
Recently released prisoners, as well as prisoners’ rights groups, legal groups and official institutions, have all gone on record and told Al Jazeera that they believe any Palestinian detained by Israel is currently at risk. of death.
“The situation inside the prisons is horrible,” said Amani Sarahneh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
“We are receiving reports of massive daily beatings of prisoners. They (Israeli authorities) are threatening to kill them,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that “no one has been spared.”
On October 23, Israeli authorities announced that Palestinian prisoner Omar Daraghmeh, 56, had died in Megiddo prison “after feeling unwell and going to the prison clinic for tests.” .
Daraghmeh’s son Nimr confirmed to Al Jazeera that his father did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest two weeks earlier, on October 9, at his home in the town of Tubas, in the northern occupied West Bank. .
The initial medical report released by the Israeli Prison Service, Sarahneh said, indicated that Daraghmeh “suffered from internal bleeding, particularly in the stomach and intestines,” which the family said was “the result hits “.
Omar Daraghmeh, a 56-year-old man with no underlying #medical conditions, died in prison on October 11 – just hours after telling his lawyer that he was feeling well. Arafat Hamdan, 25, suffering from diabetes, died in Ofer prison on October 24, two days after his arrest.
– Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI) (@PHRIsrael) October 26, 2023
On October 24, Arafat Hamdan, a 25-year-old diabetic man from the village of Beit Sira, a suburb of Ramallah, was announced dead in Ofer prison two days after his arrest.
Al Jazeera, Palestinian prisoner groups and his family received the same information about what happened: Israeli forces beat Hamdan, denied him his medication and placed him in the sun with a bag over his head for long hours before dying.
“This is what happened based on the testimonies of the people who were detained with him in Etzion, and what his family heard as well,” Sarahneh said, noting that Hamdan, like the majority of people detained, was beaten in front of his family during his arrest.
Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli Prison Service for comment on both cases but did not receive one in time for publication.
Naji Abbas, head of prisoner records at Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI), told Al Jazeera that autopsies were performed on Tuesday for Daraghmeh and Hamdan at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. in Tel Aviv by a doctor appointed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). ).
It is unclear when the institute’s report will be released.
Double the inmates
Since Israeli bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip began on October 7, Israeli forces have also intensified nighttime raids against Palestinian homes, villages and towns in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Over the past 25 days, Israel has doubled the number of Palestinians detained, from 5,200 people to more than 10,000.
This includes at least 4,000 workers from Gaza who worked in Israel and who were detained mainly in military bases. Separately, Israel has also arrested another 1,740 Palestinians during nighttime military raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7.
Most of these prisoners are held under laws and military orders that allow detention without trial or charge.
A 25-year-old former prisoner, who asked to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera that two of his uncles, both in their 50s, were beaten while arrested at their home in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, in the south of the country. the occupied West Bank.
“They took my uncle Ahmad* and separated him from his family, while his wife and six children were in another room listening to the sound of their beatings,” he said.
Days after his uncles’ arrest, he came across a widely shared video showing three Palestinians being manhandled, blindfolded and handcuffed on the floor of an Israeli detention center with soldiers mocking them, for surrendering. realized that one of them was his uncle.
Abbas, head of records at PHRI, told Al Jazeera his organization was asking Israeli institutions, including the military, police and intelligence, for answers to questions about rights violations stemming from videos of soldiers mistreating Palestinian detainees .
The repression continues
In addition to the severe beatings, Israeli prison authorities cut off medical care for Palestinian prisoners for at least the first week after October 7, including those who had been beaten, according to rights groups. Family visits as well as routine attorney visits have been halted, the groups said.
While prisoners were previously allowed three to four hours out of their cells in the courtyard, this has now been reduced to less than an hour. “They stay locked in their rooms all day – even the sick, the disabled and the elderly,” Abbas said.
Overcrowded cells now often house double the number of detainees they were built for, with many sleeping on the floor without mattresses.
Meanwhile, Israeli prison forces also cut off electricity and hot water, conducted cell searches, removed all electrical appliances, including televisions, radios, hotplates and kettles, and closed the canteen that prisoners use to buy food and basic necessities like toothpaste.
“All public facilities have been closed: the kitchen, the canteen, the laundry room where we wash our clothes,” said Salah, the released prisoner.
A prisoner, still behind bars, told his lawyer that the mistreatment of prisoners continues: at the facility where this prisoner is being held, Israeli prison authorities have even removed the shower curtains, denying them any privacy during their bath. Since then, prisoners have refused to take a shower.
*Some names have been changed to protect the identities of individuals.