Repeating Abu Ghraib, this time in Palestine

When the Zionist soldiers released “Baha Abu Rakba” after three weeks near one of the Gaza border crossings, this 24-year-old Palestinian prisoner was walking with difficulty; Because during his captivity, he was repeatedly hit with a gun butt and was injured in the groin area by the Zionist soldiers.

After the Al-Aqsa Storm operation on October 7th, the Israeli army invaded Gaza and captured thousands of Palestinians living in Gaza in an action they said was carried out by identifying Hamas members.

The Wall Street Journal has written conversations with several freed prisoners and their painful memories of the captivity. In these conversations, the Palestinian prisoners stated that the Zionist soldiers beat them during the interrogation sessions and put them under stressful conditions for long periods of time.

“I was just praying to survive,” Baha Abu Raqbah, who works with the Red Cross medical team, told the Wall Street Journal. He said that some days the Zionists forced him to kneel for up to 20 hours a day, while his hands were tied above his head with a rope.

The Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz reported earlier this month that at least 27 Palestinians have been martyred in captivity of the Zionist regime since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa storm operation until today. The Zionist regime has also admitted that it is aware of this statistic.

Many of these former prisoners reported that they were assaulted by the Zionist soldiers. Many of them also complained about the insults and verbal abuse of the Zionists during their captivity. According to the freed Palestinians, the Zionist soldiers even deprived them of sleep and allowed them to rest only four hours a day.

Also, during this short period, the Palestinian prisoners were deprived of beds and blankets. According to these prisoners, the sanitary conditions of the detention centers are also unfavorable, and the low quality of food and keeping a large number of prisoners in small spaces with low capacity are inhuman features of these detention centers.

The CEO of the “General Committee Against Torture in Israel” says that the Zionist regime deprives Palestinian prisoners of any communication with others and not only deprives them of the right to access a lawyer, but also does not allow them to contact their families. He further stated that the Zionist regime has been torturing Palestinians in its prisons for a long time.

With the start of the Zionist regime’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, the published pictures of Palestinian prisoners were followed by widespread international condemnation, in which the Palestinians were naked and hugging their knees because of the cold. The intensity of the reactions was so great that even the US State Department, as the main supporter of the Zionist regime, described these images as “very disturbing”.

The Zionist regime claims that it only asks the prisoners to strip for physical inspection; But Palestinians who have been freed from the captivity of this regime told the Wall Street Journal that sometimes even the interrogation sessions were held without clothes.

Source: ISNA