Palestinian report: 1,200 detainees from Gaza face torture crimes in Israel

A Palestinian report revealed on Tuesday that 1,200 Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip in the Negev prison in southern Israel face “systematic crimes of torture.”

This came in a statement by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Prisoners’ Club (non-governmental).

The statement quoted new testimonies of a group of Gaza detainees in the Negev prison based on a series of visits conducted by lawyers of the Prisoners’ Authority recently, including eight detainees.

He pointed out that “most of the detainees were arrested at the beginning of the (Israeli) ground invasion of the Gaza Strip (on October 27, 2023) during their displacement from northern to southern Gaza, and others were arrested from shelter schools and from the Shifa Medical Hospital complex.”

“The horrific details they were subjected to were mainly linked to the initial period of their detention, but this does not mean that the crimes of torture against them stopped after they were transferred from the camp they indicated was adjacent to the Gaza Strip to prisons,” the statement said.

“All detainees are still subjected to difficult and tragic conditions that, according to their description, the language is unable to convey the truth about what is happening to them inside the prison, specifically at the current stage due to the spread of skin diseases among their ranks, specifically scabies, which has become a tool of torture and abuse,” he said.

The statement said that the data “indicates that there are about 1,200 detainees from Gaza in the Negev prison, distributed over eight sections, each section includes (150) detainees.”

He explained that the Israeli prison administration “announced one thousand and 584 of those whom he classified as illegal fighters,” while Israeli media revealed the arrest of more than 4,500 people from Gaza.

With unequivocal American support, Israel has been waging a war on Gaza since October 7, which has resulted in more than 137,000 dead and wounded Palestinians, mostly children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has killed dozens, in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.