|
|
Israel announced last week that 27 Gazan detainees rounded up after the 7 October Hamas attack have died in its custody—sparking new criticism about its treatment of Palestinians.
Israel confirmed few details in the Haaretz report and stated that some of those who died suffered from prior medical conditions.
An IDF spokesman said many of the detainees were arrested during the 7 October Hamas attack “or during the ground campaign in the Gaza Strip.”
The paper said these detainees died while being tortured during questioning.
The report said that many of these detainees were held in temporary camps and have been questioned by Israel’s secret Unit 504. The Jerusalem Post described the unit as something of a hybrid between Mossad and Shin Bet. The group built a makeshift southern headquarters shortly after the Hamas attack and “doubled the size of its ranks, and reinvested deeply into Gaza,” the report said.
The Haaretz report said Palestinian detainees are often beaten and punished by these troops during questioning.
Hamas called for an internal probe on these facilities and accused the Israeli army of committing war crimes. The Palestinian group said the deaths are “further evidence of the scale of the crimes, violations, and atrocities that Palestinian detainees are exposed to in occupation prisons.”
UNRWA, the UN agency in Palestine, told The New York Times that some of the detainees who were released back to Gaza said they were sexually assaulted, refused medical care, robbed, stripped, and beaten.
Anadolu Ajansi estimated that more than 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been arrested by Israel since the start of the war, but that number is hard to verify because Israel will not confirm exact numbers.
TRENDPOST: Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said, “We have seen these people coming back from detention, some of them for a couple of weeks, some of them for a couple of months, and most of them coming back (are) completely traumatized by the ordeal they have gone through.”
The Associated Press, citing human rights groups, reported that Israel has been accused of “disappearing” Gaza Palestinians—detaining them without charge or trial and not disclosing to family or lawyers where they’re held. Israel’s prison service says all “basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards.”
Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, the UN expert on torture, said she is carrying out a fact-finding investigation into these allegations.
“I’m calling on … Hamas, the state of Palestine, Israel to put their torture tools down, to really have a focus on peace and a prospect of living side-by-side as neighbors in the future,” she said.
TRENDPOST: It should be noted that horrors occurred at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which currently holds 30 inmates. We reported in 2019 that even with 40 inmates, the prison costs American taxpayers $380 million a year.
Inmates were brutalized and tortured at the facility and other offshore dark sites.
In July 2023, over 20 years since the facility was opened to a United Nations independent investigator, who told the AP: What the men still at Guantanamo and those who have been released need most, she said, “is torture rehabilitation.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano recently wrote on JudgeNap.com: “The Bush/Cheney torture regime and its Devil’s Island at Gitmo are among the darkest events perpetrated by a modern American presidency. Far from preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution—as Bush and Cheney both swore to do—by destroying the free will and personhood of their victims, they have undermined the values upon which the Constitution is based.”
But international law evidently does not apply to the U.S. or Israel.