Amnesty International (AI) published a report on Thursday denouncing torture and incommunicado detention of Palestinians by Israel and calling on the authorities to “immediately” release those arbitrarily detained.
“Israeli authorities must end the indefinite incommunicado detention of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip, without charge or trial, under the Unlawful Combatants Law, in flagrant violation of international law,” the organization demanded in a press release.
The army invoked the law, enacted in 2002, for the first time in five years to arrest suspected participants in the October 7 attacks, but soon after expanded its use “to detain Palestinians in Gaza en masse without charge or trial,” the organization said.
AI interviewed 27 people who were detained and subsequently released—five women, 21 men, and a 14-year-old boy—and all of them reported being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.
Detainees are not provided with evidence justifying their arrest, nor is their legal counsel, leading many to remain in prison for months “without the slightest idea” of why they are being held, in violation of international law, “completely isolated from their family and loved ones, and with no means of challenging the reasons for their detention,” according to Amnesty International.
They are also unable to communicate with their families, as one health worker told the organization, saying not knowing whether his family was alive or dead in Gaza was “even worse than torture and hunger.”
Of those interviewed, eight showed marks and bruises consistent with torture, and two people’s medical reports corroborated the accounts of torture.
In addition, Amnesty International has verified five videos of mass arrests, some of which have shown people being filmed in their underwear after being arrested in northern Gaza and Khan Yunis (south).
According to the organization, “forced public nudity for prolonged periods violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and constitutes sexual violence.”
Some of the most explicit cases were recorded in Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel. Prisoners held there reported being forced to remain in stressful positions for hours and forbidden from speaking to other inmates or raising their heads.
