Torture An
Amnesty International report released in July 2024 included accounts of abuse from Sde Teiman detainees that were consistent with earlier reports. Amnesty interviewed a 14-year-old child who stated that interrogators had beaten him, burned him with cigarettes, and kept him blindfolded and handcuffed. In May 2024, three anonymous Israeli employees of the camp spoke to
CNN as
whistleblowers, during which they corroborated and expanded upon reports of abuse and poor conditions revealed by multiple detainees who were later released. The whistleblowers detailed enclosures where detainees are blindfolded and not allowed to speak or move. Images leaked to CNN show rows of men wearing gray
tracksuits with blindfolds, each sitting on an exceptionally thin mattress, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Punishments include beatings and for prisoners to raise their hands in a
stress position, sometimes
zip-tied to a fence, for upwards of an hour. Shadi Abu Seido, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, told Türkiye's TRT: “They stripped me completely naked for 10 hours in the cold. I was then transferred to Sde Teiman and held there for 100 days, during which I remained handcuffed and blindfolded. Many died in detention, others lost their minds. Some had limbs amputated. They suffered sexual and physical abuse. They brought dogs that urinated on us. When I asked why I had been arrested, they answered: ‘We have killed all the journalists. They died once. But we brought you here and you will die hundreds of times.’”
Sexual abuse and rape Several Palestinian prisoners since returned to Gaza reported to UNWRA and the New York Times that a metal stick was used to inflict injury by penetrating the anus of detainees under interrogation and multiple prisoners reported the use of electric shocks, sometimes being forced to "sit in a chair wired with electricity". On 29 July 2024, the Israeli military police detained nine Israeli soldiers for questioning as part of an investigation of a suspected abuse of a Palestinian prisoner, whom
The Times of Israel reported "signs of serious abuse, including to his anus". In response, far-right politicians, including Heritage Minister
Amichay Eliyahu and Knesset Member
Zvi Sukkot urged their supporters to protest at Sde Teiman against the nine soldiers' detention. Various right-wing politicians have condemned the Israeli soldiers' detention: Justice Minister
Yariv Levin said that "harsh pictures of soldiers being arrested" were "impossible to accept"; National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the soldiers' detention was "shameful" and asked for "the military authorities to back the fighters ... Soldiers need to have our full support"; Economy Minister
Nir Barkat declared: "I support our fighters", while criticizing the events as a "show trial"; Transportation Minister
Miri Regev commented that the arrests of Israeli soldiers were "dangerous" during war, and warned against military prosecutions that were "appeasing our enemies". Separately, Knesset Member
Hanoch Milwidsky argued in the Knesset that it is permissible to sexually abuse Hamas commandos of the
Nukhba: "...everything is legitimate to do. Everything." Ibrahim Salem, featured in one of the first photos leaked from the detention camp, was held there for 52 days without charge and released in early August 2024. In one instance, a prisoner in his 40s was handcuffed and forced to bend over a desk while a female soldier inserted her fingers and other objects into his rectum. If the prisoner moved, a male soldier positioned in front of him would beat him and compel him to remain in that position. A surveillance video leaked in August 2024 apparently showed Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a detainee. Walid Khalili, a
Palestinian Medical Relief Society paramedic and ambulance driver detained in Sde Teiman for 20 days without charge, described severe mistreatment by Israeli soldiers. Transferred from
Tel al-Hawa to the detention camp, he was forced to wear a diaper and placed in a large warehouse-like building with chains hanging from the ceiling. Detainees, also in diapers, were suspended from chains attached to metal handcuffs. Khalili described being chained, electrocuted while wearing a garment and headband connected to wires, and subjected to beatings. He recounted, "The world was spinning around, and I fainted. They hit me with batons... With every question I was electro-shocked to wake me up. He told me confess and we will stop torturing you." He endured electric shocks every other day, stress positions, and cold water dousing. Before interrogations, he was given an unknown drug that caused hallucinations and disorientation. He reported that an interrogator fluent in Arabic questioned him about hostages, threatened harm to his family if he did not confess, and "told me how many children I have, all their names, my address." He received no medical care despite having broken ribs, witnessed a detainee's leg being amputated due to shackling, and saw another detainee die from what appeared to be cardiac arrest.
Use of dogs One prisoner at the Sde Teiman torture camp told the PHCR that “We were stripped completely. Soldiers brought dogs that climbed on us and urinated on me. Then one of the dogs raped me – the dog… inserted its penis into my anus". In June 2024, a Palestinian prisoner released from
Sde Teiman gave testimony that prisoners were raped by dogs.
Healthcare workers Palestinian healthcare workers in the Gaza Strip had been arbitrarily detained by the Israeli military during their raids on hospitals during the war, and transferred to detention centers in Israel's south, including Sde Teiman. Human Rights Watch has documented several of these cases, in which detained health workers were beaten, stripped, handcuffed weeks on end, and subject to torture and sexual violence, as well as threats of rape and killing of their Gaza family members.
Lawyer visits Khaled Mahajneh, a lawyer who visited the detention center, stated that the conditions were "more horrific than anything we've heard about
Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo." He stated that he went to the detention center seeking information on a reporter named Muhammad Arab from
Al Araby TV who had been detained while covering the
Al-Shifa Hospital siege. Khaled described the reporter as being "unrecongnizable", and said that he had testified of prisoners being routinely abused, of guards openly sexually assaulting prisoners, and of multiple prisoners having died from torture.
Field hospitals In April 2024,
Haaretz obtained a letter written by a doctor at a
field hospital at Sde Teiman to Israel's attorney general, defense minister, and health minister. The doctor wrote that "inmates are fed through
straws, defecate in
diapers and are held [in] constant restraints, which violate
medical ethics and the law." during the 2024
New York Times visit, the newspaper noted that three doctors attributed their use of anonymity to fear of retribution from "Hamas and their allies". Whistleblowers further stated that patients were shackled to their beds and surgeries were performed without adequate painkillers. == Responses ==