Ramallah, occupied West Financial institution – On the morning of October 8, sooner or later after Hamas’s assault, Israeli particular forces models raided the cells of Gilboa jail and violently beat Palestinian prisoners held there.
“The revenge assault started that morning,” Salah Fateen Salah, a former prisoner who was launched from Gilboa on October 24 after 5 years in jail, instructed Al Jazeera.
“They shouted by way of the audio system telling all of the prisoners to get inside their rooms, kneel down on their knees, put their palms on their heads, and to face away from the door, so you don’t have any concept what’s taking place behind you once they open the door,” defined 23-year-old Salah.
“Then they got here in and began beating folks, a number of rooms without delay, with their palms, toes and batons, together with steel ones,” he mentioned. “They unleashed their canines on us.
“They beat a prisoner who has diabetes and takes three injections a day. He was throwing up a lot blood … we have been nervous sick for 2 hours that he could be martyred from the quantity of blood that he was throwing up,” mentioned Salah.
Israeli forces additionally “reduce open the brow of one other man who was my cellmate,” he mentioned, noting “there was blood everywhere in the jail flooring”.
The beatings, mentioned Salah, went on for days. “They haven’t any humanity. Those that beat aged and sick folks haven’t any humanity. The top of the jail himself was making loss of life threats towards us.”
Deaths in custody
Since October 7, two Palestinian prisoners have died whereas in Israeli custody shortly after they have been arrested, and not less than dozens have been injured. Each males who died in custody have been held with out trial or cost.
A number of movies have additionally emerged in latest weeks of Israeli troopers beating, stepping on, abusing and humiliating detained Palestinians who’ve been blindfolded, stripped both partially or fully, and have their palms cuffed. Many social media customers mentioned the scenes introduced again reminiscences of the torture by United States forces in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib in 2003.
It’s no shock then, that the identical authorities that tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib is funding the identical ways on Palestinians. That is disgusting.
CEASEFIRE NOW! END U.S. MILITARY FUNDING TO ISRAEL NOW!
— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 31, 2023
Not too long ago launched prisoners, in addition to prisoner rights teams, attorneys’ teams and official establishments, have all publicly mentioned, and instructed Al Jazeera, they consider that any Palestinian in Israeli custody is at the moment prone to loss of life.
“The state of affairs contained in the prisons is horrific,” mentioned Amani Sarahneh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
“We’re receiving data of each day mass beatings of the prisoners. They [Israeli authorities] are threatening to kill them,” she instructed Al Jazeera, including that “nobody has been spared.”
On October 23, Israeli authorities introduced that 56-year-old Palestinian prisoner Omar Daraghmeh died in Megiddo jail “after feeling unwell and going to the jail clinic for assessments”.
Daraghmeh’s son Nimr confirmed to Al Jazeera that his father didn’t have any medical situations earlier than his arrest solely two weeks prior, on October 9, from his house within the metropolis of Tubas within the northern occupied West Financial institution.
The preliminary medical report issued by the Israeli jail administration, Sarahneh mentioned, famous that Daraghmeh was “affected by inside bleeding, notably in his abdomen and intestines,” which the household believes was “the results of beating”.
Omar Daraghmeh, a 56-year-old with out underlying #medical situations, died in jail on October 11 – mere hours after telling his lawyer he felt properly. Arafat Hamdan, a 25-year-old with diabetes, died in Ofer Jail on October 24, two days after his arrest.
— Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) (@PHRIsrael) October 26, 2023
On October 24, Arafat Hamdan, a 25-year-old with diabetes from the village of Beit Sira on the outskirts of Ramallah, was introduced lifeless in Ofer jail two days after he was arrested.
Al Jazeera, Palestinian prisoner teams and his household obtained the identical data on what transpired: Israeli forces beat Hamdan, refused him his medicine, and positioned him below the solar with a bag on his head for lengthy hours earlier than he died.
“That is what occurred primarily based on the testimonies from the individuals who have been detained with him at Etzion, and what his household have heard, too,” mentioned Sarahneh, noting that Hamdan, as for almost all of people who find themselves detained, was crushed in entrance of his household throughout his arrest.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Israeli jail providers for touch upon each instances however didn’t obtain one in time for publication.
Naji Abbas, prisoners’ case supervisor at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), instructed Al Jazeera that autopsies have been carried out on Tuesday for each Daraghmeh and Hamdan on the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv by a health care provider appointed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
It isn’t clear when the institute’s report will come out.
Double the detainees
Since Israel’s bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip started on October 7, Israeli forces have additionally intensified their nightly raids into Palestinian houses, villages and cities within the occupied West Financial institution and East Jerusalem.
Up to now 25 days, Israel has doubled the number of Palestinians in its custody, from 5,200 folks to greater than 10,000.
This contains not less than 4,000 labourers from Gaza who have been working in Israel and who’ve been detained primarily in navy bases. Individually, Israel has additionally arrested 1,740 different Palestinians in overnight army raids within the occupied West Financial institution and East Jerusalem since October 7.
Most of those prisoners are being held below legal guidelines and navy orders that enable detention with out trial or cost.
A 25-year-old former prisoner, who requested to not be named, instructed Al Jazeera that two of his uncles, each of their 50s, have been crushed whereas they have been arrested at their houses within the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem within the south of the occupied West Financial institution.
“They took my uncle Ahmad*, separated him from his household, whereas his spouse and 6 kids have been in one other room listening to the sound of them beating him,” he mentioned.
Days after his uncles have been arrested, he stumbled upon a broadly shared video of three roughed up, blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian males on the ground of an Israeli detention centre with troopers mocking them, solely to understand that one among them was his uncle.
Abbas, the case supervisor at PHRI, instructed Al Jazeera that his organisation is asking Israeli establishments together with the military, the police and the intelligence, for solutions to questions on rights violations arising from the movies of troopers abusing Palestinian detainees.
Persevering with crackdown
Along with the extreme beatings, Israeli jail authorities halted medical consideration for Palestinian prisoners for not less than the primary week after October 7, together with to those that had been crushed, in response to rights teams. Household visits in addition to routine lawyer visits have been stopped, the teams mentioned.
The place prisoners have been beforehand entitled to between three and 4 hours exterior their cells within the yard, that has now been reduce to lower than an hour. “They continue to be locked up of their rooms all day – even sick folks, disabled, aged,” mentioned Abbas.
Overcrowded cells now usually home double the variety of detainees they have been constructed for, with many sleeping on the ground with out mattresses.
In the meantime, Israeli jail forces have additionally reduce electrical energy and sizzling water, carried out cell searches, eliminated all electrical gadgets together with TVs, radios, cooking slabs and kettles, and shut down the canteen which prisoners use to purchase meals and primary provides similar to toothpaste.
“All public services have been shut down — the kitchen, the canteen, the laundry room the place we wash our garments,” mentioned Salah, the launched prisoner.
One prisoner, who stays behind bars, instructed his lawyer that the maltreatment of prisoners is continuous: Within the facility the place this prisoner is being held, Israeli jail authorities even eliminated the bathe curtains, denying them privateness whereas bathing. The prisoners have since refused to bathe.
*Some names have been modified to guard peoples’ identities.
