Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Faraj al-Samouni, 39, sits in a tent in a makeshift camp in Deir el-Balah, surrounded by his family who find it hard to believe he is alive after months of Israeli captivity.
“My brothers didn’t recognize me when I was freed,” he says. He is diminished, having lost 30 kg in captivity, or 30% of his weight.
It matters little to his mother Zahwa, 56, who sits beaming next to him, welcoming visitors, many of them families of other prisoners seeking information about their detained relatives.
Faraj spent more than six months in captivity after being arrested along with his two brothers as they walked through the “security corridor” on November 16, en route to southern Gaza.
In December, Tel Aviv Tribune spoke to Zahwa and her sister-wife Zeenat, just after Faraj and his brothers Abdullah, 24, and Hamam, 16, were abducted.
Zeenat’s sons, Abdullah and Hamam, remain in custody and their fate is unknown.
Tortured, interrogated, starved
“I was shocked when I was arrested. I am a farmer with no political activity,” Faraj said.
“I was walking down the secure corridor with my wife and children, my daughter in my arms. The Israeli soldiers called Abdullah, Hamam was upset, and the soldiers called him too,” Faraj recalls.
“I was angry and protesting because they had my brothers, so they noticed me. Abu blousa hamra (the man in the red shirt), come here,” the soldier said.
“I handed my daughter to my wife and approached. They made us strip completely naked and handcuffed us.”
Faraj and about 75 other men remained handcuffed and blindfolded as soldiers beat them before transferring them to a location he could not identify.
“These were barracks, that’s where the most cruel tortures began,” he says.
“The blows were mainly on sensitive parts of the body. The female soldiers trampled on our heads with their metal-tipped boots.”
Then came the interrogations during which Faraj was forced to provide information about Hamas, its members, rocket launching sites and details about October 7.
“When I denied any connection with Hamas or any military or political activity, the interrogator would go crazy, shout: ‘You are a liar!’ and beat me even more.”
Faraj estimates he spent 30 days in the barracks, with fractures to his lower back and neck caused by torture preventing him from resting.
“We were only allowed to shower once and they didn’t give us water or food for days. They gave us one loaf of bread for three people and if we asked for anything, we were beaten.”
One day, he says, three young men returned from interrogation covered in blood, unable to move.
They had been beaten and raped with sticks.
“We tried to support them as much as we could, demanding that they be treated. The only response was to give them half a paracetamol tablet.”
“Welcome to Hell” in the Naqab
Eventually, Faraj was transferred to a detention center in the Naqab (Negev) desert.
“The guards greeted us with sarcasm: ‘Welcome to hell,'” he says.
“I was stripped naked and tied to a chair with a hole in it. The interrogators tortured us by applying pressure and direct blows to sensitive parts of our bodies in extreme cold.
I stayed like that for days, defecating into a bucket placed under me.
According to Faraj, the type of torture used by the jailers depended on the prisoner’s luck.
“When they took me back to the cell, I saw prisoners whose skin had melted… burned by hot water poured directly on their bodies.
“They were screaming in pain day and night, but none of them received any treatment.”
The prisoners were moved into tents surrounded by barbed wire, about 30 prisoners crammed into each tent.
“Sleeping comfortably was a dream. We were allowed to take a shower every two or three weeks, in a one-hour time slot, between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m.”
Rashes and skin diseases such as scabies are spreading among the prisoners.
“We had one towel for 30 people, which we divided into small pieces. We had a uniform, the one we wore when we arrived. I caught scabies several times.”
One day, Faraj got angry and demanded treatment.
“That day I was dragged and put in solitary confinement for three days… the torture was so horrible.”
With no treatment available, Faraj said, prisoners used what they had, applying a little tomato water to their skin to relieve the itching.
They were given a tomato to share between four prisoners, but the discomfort was severe enough that using it on their skin was worth it.
The torment of not knowing
Despite the daily pain of captivity, the day Faraj remembers most is when an officer told him that his wife, children and mother had been killed in a bomb attack on December 30.
“I was shocked, especially because he gave me a date and showed me pictures of dead people and body parts, claiming they were my family,” Faraj recalls.
“I pretended to be calm in front of him, but I fainted when I got back to my cell.”
Faraj had no way of verifying what he had been told, any more than the other captives who had been told their families had been killed.
Another method of psychological torture was to tell prisoners they were being released and then take them to solitary confinement.
“When I was told I was going to be released this time, I didn’t believe it until I arrived in Gaza,” Faraj said.
“More than once I was told I was freed. I celebrated the event and said goodbye to my cellmates, only to return after days of torture in solitary confinement.”
Faraj’s biggest fear was whether his family was alive, as his family had also lost hope of him returning alive.
“The day before he was released, I had a nervous breakdown,” Zahwa says.
“Every day I walked to connect to the Internet and check who had been released… I had lost hope. But by the will of God, he was released.”
“His wife, children and I were screaming with joy… We woke up the whole camp. Everyone thought Faraj had been killed, but we told them he was alive and free.”
After going through the agony of uncertainty, Faraj gave up his desperate need for rest to talk to the relatives of other prisoners.
Even as he spoke to Tel Aviv Tribune, relatives of missing people were calling and visiting him, seeking information about their loved ones.
A visitor came to ask Faraj about his brother, telling him that his mother and other brothers had been killed in an Israeli bombing and that he desperately needed news of his missing brother.
Faraj recognized the man and tried to reassure him, but his features changed as he searched for words, eventually breaking down in tears.
The man, panicked, asks: “Did they torture him? Did they amputate his limbs?”
Faraj tried to reassure him that his brother was fine.
Later, Faraj said: “What could I tell him? That his brother lost his mind in prison and is unconscious now?”
There is a moment of tearful silence.
Faraj calmly recounts that prisoners have entrusted him with messages, asking him to share their suffering.
“All I can say is that death is a million times more merciful than prison.”