HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP ACCUSES ISRAELI PRISON OFFICIALS OF RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT

A new leaked video showed the alleged gang-rape of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention camp.

Fri 09 August 2024:

Israeli prison authorities have systematically used sexual assault and rape as a means of torture against Palestinian detainees, rights group Addameer Foundation said yesterday.

According to testimonies obtained from a number of detainees in Ofer Prison, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, many detainees had been subjected to rape and sexual assault during their detention, the group said.

One detainee reported that one night, the prison repression unit took him and a number of detainees to a barracks while they were handcuffed and blindfolded.

“They ordered us to sleep on our stomachs. One of the soldiers took me to a corner of the barracks and ordered me to raise my handcuffed hands and open my feet. He beat me with a stick on my back and all over my body. He pulled down my pants and then inserted a foreign object into my buttocks. I suffered from pain for more than two months. I was unable to sit on my buttocks and I bled for two months, in addition to blood coming out with my urine,” he said.

Another detainee reported that during the torture, a rifle butt was inserted into his buttocks while he was blindfolded and handcuffed, which caused him severe pain. On Tuesday, a leaked video showing Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee from Gaza in the notorious Sde Teiman Israeli detention centre was aired.

The footage from surveillance cameras, aired by Israel’s Channel 12, shows a group of Israeli reservist soldiers picking a detainee out of more than 30 others, who were all laid on the ground blindfolded. The detainee is then taken to a corner.

“It is clear that they know about the surveillance cameras, and try to hide their act with shields,” the report said. “The video contains documentation of the felony of the reservists: the act of sodomy in these circumstances.”

The report said the detainee was bleeding and was taken to hospital after several hours, where his condition was described as “complex”.

“The injury was caused by the insertion of an object,” the channel said, quoting a medical report.

He subsequently died of his injuries.

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Addameer confirmed that the Israeli occupation’s use of sexual assaults as a means of torture constitute a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and demanded the United Nations and relevant international institutions open an investigation into the Israeli occupation’s practice of sexual assaults against Palestinian detainees and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

It also demanded the International Committee of the Red Cross shoulder its responsibilities and conduct visits to all prisons and monitor the detention conditions and expose the violations practised inside prisons. The ICC prosecutor, it added, must expedite the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

-MEMO

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