A Palestinian human rights report said on Wednesday that the number of martyrs among the ranks of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and camps as a result of torture since last October 7 is “the highest in the history of the prisoner movement.”
This came in a joint statement by the Commission for the Affairs of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners (governmental) and the Palestinian Prisoners Club (non-governmental), on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which falls on June 26 of each year.
The statement explained that “the number of martyrs in Israeli prisons and camps announced since the beginning of the war of extermination (last October 7) by the competent institutions reached at least 18 martyrs, in addition to dozens of Gaza detainees who were killed in the occupation prisons and camps, and they did not reveal their identities.”
The statement pointed out that “the crime of torture as a policy formed the basis of the Israeli colonial structure, and the occupation practiced this crime as an approach, and worked to develop many tools and methods to consolidate it that went beyond the definition adopted by the international human rights system for the crime of torture.”
He continued, “If one carefully examines the details of the conditions and detention life that prisoners and detainees have lived in for decades in Israeli occupation prisons, as well as the contexts of policies, crimes, and serious violations, the occupation has worked to transform every right recognized by the international system for prisoners into a tool of torture, by robbing the prisoner of this right and depriving him of it.” “By all means.”
The statement said that since the start of what it described as a genocidal war in Gaza, and with the escalation of arrests that affected more than 9,400 citizens from the West Bank, along with thousands from Gaza, and hundreds of internal Palestinians, torture operations have escalated in an unprecedented level and intensity.
He pointed out that “the detainees’ testimonies indicate the use of psychological and physical torture methods, which actually begin from the first moment of arrest through the brutal method of arrest, systematic intimidation operations, severe beatings, and restrictions through which they deliberately cause severe pain in the detainee’s limbs.”
Serious violations
The statement listed some of the violations to which the detainee is subjected, as he is subjected to ghost operations, detention in camps, detention and interrogation centers in humiliating, humiliating and degrading conditions, insults and obscene words directed at detainees and their families, interrogation with them for long periods, and deprivation of sleep.
Testimonies indicate, according to the same statement, that they were subjected to sexual assaults, including rape crimes. Severe beatings and severe torture, in addition to the martyrdom of prisoners and detainees, caused hundreds of detainees to suffer fractures, specifically in the ribs, and were left without treatment.
In conjunction with its war on Gaza, the Israeli army and settlers escalated their attacks in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, leaving 553 Palestinian martyrs, including 133 children, and about 5,300 wounded, according to official statistics.
While Israel’s war on Gaza resulted in nearly 124,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing people amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.
Israel continues this war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions to stop it immediately, and the orders of the International Court of Justice to end the Rafah invasion, take measures to prevent acts of genocide, and improve the miserable humanitarian situation in Gaza.
