btselem /18 April 2024

I was arrested on 12 April 2022, at about 4:00 A.M. I was interrogated for 17 days for suspected membership in Hamas, and then I was taken to Ofer Prison, where they kept me for 23 days. From there I was transferred to Ketziot Prison, where I found out I’d been issued an administrative detention order for four months. At Ketziot, I was put in cell 9, wing 5, in the prison complex (A). We were five detainees in the cell, and things were relatively normal until 7 October 2023. That morning, I woke up early because of noises in the cell, and then one of the prisoners told me to get up and see what was happening. I saw on TV what happened in the communities by the border with Gaza.

They yelled on the loudspeakers: “Prisoners in the ISIS wings, all of you get down on your knees and keep your heads down and hands on your heads, facing the wall.”

Then I heard noise and saw, through the window, a missile landing near the prison and more missiles after it. The guards ran away and left the wings, and we were in a panic. Three hours later, the electricity and water were cut off in the cell, and so was the TV. The IRF (the Israel Prison Service’s Initial Reaction Force) stormed into the wings and made us all stand facing the wall, threatening us with violence. They confiscated everything that was in the cells – kitchenware, clothes, shoes, electrical appliances, TVs and radios. They also removed the glass windowpanes and took them away. They left us only iron beds, bare mattresses and one blanket per prisoner. They took the pillows, too. All we had left was the clothes we were wearing at the time.

That was the start of a period of severe violence. That day, before roll call, they yelled on the loudspeakers: “Prisoners in the ISIS wings, all of you get down on your knees and keep your heads down and hands on your heads, facing the wall.” That’s how we found out there was a new roll call protocol. IRF people came into our cell together with some other security personnel, some of them armed, and three police dogs. After roll call, the IRF people attacked us with wooden clubs and iron batons, beat us all over our bodies, kicked us and set the dogs on us. One of the dogs bit a prisoner in the arm until he bled. Another dog bit me while I was being beaten.

We were afraid that would be the end of us. While they hit us, they forced us to curse God and our mothers. I said, “My mother is a whore” and cursed God. One of them grabbed me by the hair and ordered me to say, “The people of Israel are a strong people.” He hit me hard for about 10 minutes. Then, they left the cell. The prisoner who was bitten was seriously injured, but we had nothing to treat him with. They left us one plastic bottle to fill up tap water, when the supply was turned on. All the prisoners used that bottle, and we had very little water. We had no choice but to pray without washing first. They also forbade us to pray together. We had to pray individually. During roll call, they swore at us every day. We felt we’d been cut off from the rest of the world.

We got two meals a day. The first, at midday, consisted of two hotdogs, a very small tub of labneh cheese and seven slices of bread per prisoner. The second meal was a single plate of rice that was only soaked in water and not fully cooked, which was barely enough for us. We divided the rice between us using teaspoons, so we’d all get the same amount. We made sure to eat it before the last roll call of the day, so if the guards attacked us, they wouldn’t have any food left to throw on the floor.

On Sunday, 15 October 2023, at 10:30 A.M., they ordered us one after the other to stand with our backs to the iron door of the cell and stick our hands out through the opening in the door, so they could tie them from behind.

Then they ordered us all to come out of the cell and stand next to the wall with our legs spread and our heads down. The guards kicked our testicles hard from behind. They did that to all the prisoners in my cell. Two masked guards punched me in the waist, and one grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to a cell on the other side, where he kicked me in the back. I fell on the floor and my back hurt a lot, where I’d been injured in a work accident and had broken vertebrae. I had surgery back then.

After 15 minutes, they took us back to our cells, pushing and beating us. On the way there, in the corridor between the cells, a guard kicked me twice in the right thigh. I didn’t fall, but then the guards threw me on the floor and four of them beat and kicked me for about two minutes. When they left me and I tried to enter the cell, one of them attacked me again and pushed me forcefully into the cell using his foot. When I reached the cell, I was bleeding heavily from my mouth and nose.

One of the prisoners had his jaw broken. He passed out, and when he came to, he couldn’t open his mouth. He got no treatment, and we fed him by watering down yoghurt and dripping it into his mouth. That day, they put more prisoners in our cell and there were 20 of us in it.

After that, there were about 10 days when we weren’t beaten, but there was a lot of swearing and insults. Then, on the morning of 26 October 2023, 25 members of the IRF stormed the wing with a police dog. They opened our cell door, ordered us, screaming, to kneel like I described before, and then pounced on us and beat us. The dog, which had a muzzle on, attacked us too. They kicked us and beat us with clubs all over our bodies, cursed us and called us “sons of whores” and “whores.” It lasted about half an hour. Our screams filled the prison. Some of us cried in pain. They forced us to curse God and our mothers.

That night, we were afraid to even talk. We just whispered to each other. There was silence in the cells. No one dared to even ask for a doctor. The rooms were dark, and every now and then, a guard passed by, shone a flashlight through the window in the door, and asked in Arabic, “Which one of you is Hamas, girls?” None of us dared to even look at him because we were afraid they would come in and attack us again.

In the nights that followed, the guards would occasionally come, bang loudly on the door all of a sudden and yell “ISIS.” Then, during morning roll call, you could see how terrified we all were from everyone’s body language.

The guards drew a pig and male genitals on the walls of our cell, and wrote: “Ahmad Yassin is a pig,” and things like that. They also drew a Star of David and wrote under it “The People of Israel live.” At the entrance to Wing 5, they hung a sign that read in Hebrew and Arabic: “Welcome to hell.” At night, they would play songs praising the “sons of M’aruf,” (the Druze community) and rap music very loudly to keep us from sleeping.

On Sunday, 29 October 2023, around 6:00 P.M., we poured some water on the floor of the cell to clean it and asked one of the guards for a mop. It turned out that the IRF was raiding the wing just then. They reached cell 10 and severely beat the prisoners there and then one of them, who was masked, peaked through the window in our cell door and saw the water on the floor. He said, “You poured water to make us slip.”

He yelled at us to go over to him one by one, and they tied our hands behind our backs with zip ties and then forcibly dragged each one of us into the corridor. From the cell, I heard the crying and screaming of detainees who were taken before me and beaten. I was the last one left in the cell and I was shaking with fear.

Then they took me. Two of the IRF people dragged me forcefully from the cell to the corridor and from there to the room that was used as a mess hall until 7 October. On the way, they cursed my mother and my sisters. When I got to the mess hall, I saw the other prisoners from my cell there. Everyone was stark naked and bleeding. They threw them one on top of the other. People were crying and shouting, and the guards were yelling at them and cursing them and their mothers. They forced us to curse our mothers, as well as Hamas and Sinwar. They also forced us to kiss the Israeli flag and sing the Israeli national anthem.

One of them brought a carrot and tried to shove it in my anus. While he was trying to shove the carrot in, some of the others filmed me on their cell phones

I was shaking with fear, and then they pounced on me. One of them slapped me, and the other spat in my face and said to me in Arabic: “Yihya Sinwar will die.” They ordered me to repeat what he said. Two of them stripped me like the other prisoners, and then threw me on top of the other prisoners. One of them brought a carrot and tried to shove it in my anus. While he was trying to shove the carrot in, some of the others filmed me on their cell phones. I screamed in pain and terror. It went on like that for about three minutes.

Then they shouted at us that we had two minutes to get dressed, and left. I felt broken inside. Tears rolled down my face while I was getting dressed (the witness choked up and burst into tears). Terrible thoughts went through my head. Then they took us back to the room. When we got back to the cell, we were still in shock, crying silently. No one spoke. We couldn’t look at each other. I asked myself: “What happened? Why is this happening to us?”

On 30 October 2023, at around 5:00 P.M., three guards showed up. They called a prisoner from Bethlehem who’s about 50 years old and was in the cell with us, handcuffed him and took him out of the cell for about four minutes, and then he came back. Then, the guard called me, handcuffed me and took me.

They put me in a room where a Shin Bet officer who introduced himself as ‘Adel was waiting. He said to me: “Welcome, esteemed journalist.” I was barefoot, and my hands were shaking with fear. He asked me where my shoes were, and I told him I hadn’t had any since they were confiscated. He said he’d get me shoes, even though people were taken from the Gaza border communities without shoes. The handcuffs were very tight, so I asked him to loosen them a little and he did. Then he took out a pocket knife, opened it and threw it at the wall. He said to me: “If people hear about what’s happening in the Negev prison (Ketziot), we’ll know you’re responsible.”

He demanded my Facebook account, my full name and my ID number, and asked if I had any siblings in custody. I told him no, and he said: “How do you know?” I said I knew nothing since 7 October. He asked me which of the prisoners wanted to stab guards. I told him no one was thinking about it. He told me that from now on, life in prison would look like this, and what we’d seen was just the beginning.

I asked for a drink of water, but he refused. When he told me to leave the room, I saw the IRF people in the corridor. I held on to the door and refused to go out. I said to the interrogator: “I beg you, don’t send me out. They’ll kill me,” and then he shouted: “Take this dog.” They bent my back until my head almost reached the floor, and made me run like that to the cell. On the way, one of them grabbed my hands, which were still handcuffed from behind, and pulled them back forcefully until we reached the cell.

On Sunday 5 November 2023, the wing next to us, wing 6, was emptied of prisoners. I sat on the bed, unable to move or speak. I felt like my heart was going to stop beating. Then they took us out to an outer courtyard between the wings. They put some of the prisoners in the shower room, closed the doors and beat them in there for about two minutes.

When it was my turn, they took me to the mess hall, but this time in wing 6. There were a few guards I knew there. They weren’t masked. One of them told me: “Remember my face so you don’t forget me.”

They held me, and then beat me. One of them kicked me hard in the chest. I was pushed back and crashed into one of the others, who started screaming and cursing. He grabbed a mirror with a thick wooden frame and tried to hit me in the head with it, but the others stopped him. They forcibly undressed me, took off my pants and underwear, and tied my shirt over my head like a mask. Then they hit my testicles with force. After that, the guards picked me up and sat me on the metal frame of a sink. They brought two more prisoners and told them to watch while they beat me. I was still naked, and I saw them through the thin shirt that was covering my head. The guards pulled their hair to lift their heads and forced them to open their eyes to watch me.

I took several punches in the waist area, until blood came out of my mouth. One of them came up to me, spat in my face, took me down from the frame and lifted my pants a little. From there, they led me to cell 5 in wing 6, with my head bent and my hands tied. There were two female guards standing at the door of the cell, and I passed between them naked, meaning, with my pants not covering my genitals. There were two prisoners in the cell: One of them, from the village of Tell in Nablus District, was sitting there, crying. The other one was from Jerusalem and was sentenced to three years. His face was swollen.

The guard ordered me to stick my hands, which were handcuffed from behind, through the window in the door, and then took off my handcuffs. I could still hear the screams of other prisoners from the wing being beaten by the guards. The two female guards looked at me and laughed, because my pants were down and my behind was exposed when I bent down to have my handcuffs removed. I asked one of the prisoners to lift up my pants.

They brought more prisoners from the yard, and there were 10 of us in that cell. On Friday, 10 November 2023, I led the prisoners in the cell in public prayer. Some of the prisoners cried. We heard one of the guards looking at us through the window in the door. We knew, then and there, that we would be attacked.

In the evening, the guards counted us as usual. Right after roll call, 14 IRF members attacked us with the butts of their rifles. They beat us for a long time, especially one prisoner. They broke his left shoulder, and his left eye swelled up. He passed out. They had a medic with them, and he even yelled at them to stop hitting him, but they didn’t listen.

Then, one of the guards pointed at me and said: “That’s him.” The IRF people dragged me, threw me on the floor and kicked me in the head. I tried to shield my head with my hands, but the guards pushed them away and kept beating me. I screamed in pain after about ten minutes of being beaten. I couldn’t move. Then one of them told me that if I prayed again, he’d kill me. When they left the cell, I was semi-conscious and bleeding from the nose and ears. A few minutes later, the medic came and tried to check the pulse of the unconscious prisoner through the window in the door. He apologized to us and said there was no medicine, hospital or clinic. He gave me a paracetamol pill and left.

I heard the medic tell the prisoners to give me water to drink, but they said there was no water. One of guys gave the guard an empty bottle to fill, and he left and came back and said, “I don’t have permission to give you water.”

The next day, Saturday, 11 November 2023, when I was just sitting, I started slipping out of consciousness, probably due to a combination of fear, the beatings and the malnutrition. My hands started cramping. I don’t know what caused it exactly. One of the prisoners started screaming: “’Amer is dead.” I heard him, but I couldn’t move. A few guards and a medic came to the cell door. I heard the medic tell the prisoners to give me water to drink, but they said there was no water. One of the young guys in the cell gave the guard an empty bottle to fill, and he left and came back a while later and said, “I don’t have permission to give you water.” He returned the bottle to them empty. I was in bad shape physically and couldn’t move. When evening roll call started, I was still in the same position. The force people came into the cell to count, and I was still lying on the floor. The unit commander told everyone to go back and called the dog handlers. She ordered me to put my hands on my head. The force people brought the dog into the cell, and at that point, I completely lost consciousness.

I woke up by the cell door, when the medic put perfume near my nose. I started crying with fear. The commander asked me what happened to me, and I told her I passed out. Later, the other prisoners told me that when I passed out, during the count, the guards ordered two prisoners to pick me up, so they could check if I really was passed out. Then they ordered them to prop me up on the floor by the door until I came to.

The next day, 12 November 2023, in the early afternoon, a senior officer came and said the whole wing was being moved. One of the prisoners asked him if they were going to beat us. The officer went up to the door of the cell and said in Hebrew (which I understand) that they’d already killed everyone in Gaza and that they would transfer us to a place no one knows about. They shackled us with iron chains in pairs and ordered us to run to the door of a prisoner transport vehicle.

When we got to it, they started hitting me on the head, and I fell to the ground. The guard sat on my head and told me in Arabic that Yihya Sinwar sent him to me. There were 55 detainees, and they put us in two vehicles that took us to Wing C of the same prison. We arrived at the yard, each pair shackled together. The IRF people were waiting for us there, masked, to check us.

They told us to advance and had us sit on the floor in the hallway. Then they ordered me and the prisoner who was shackled to me to advance further. I was terrified. We went into the security check room. They took our handcuffs off and told us to strip. We took off our clothes, facing each other, and then they did a manual body search on us and then a search with a hand-held metal detector. When the device reached my testicles, it beeped. The person who was searching me told me to take out what I was hiding there. He repeated it three times, and I told him I had nothing on me.

the officer took a pair of pliers and grabbed my testicles with it. I screamed screams that shook the whole prison, and then I passed out for a while

Then an unmasked IRF officer came. He also ordered me to take out what I had there. I told him, “I have nothing.” So then he grabbed a metal chair and hit me in the face. I fell on the floor, bleeding heavily from the nose. The guards pulled me and stood me up, and then the officer took a pair of pliers and grabbed my testicles with it. I screamed screams that shook the whole prison, and then I passed out for a while. I woke up after water was poured on me (the witness cried and went silent for a while).

They held me down, and the officer checked my testicles with the metal detector again. This time it didn’t beep, so he said to me in Arabic: “God had mercy on you.” They dressed me and then handcuffed me in front with metal handcuffs. He ordered me to raise my hands above my head, bend over and run fast for a distance of 100 meters. They did the same with the other prisoner. Then we got to the wing, and then two more guards started beating me severely. One of them took off his helmet, ran towards me quickly, and said: “Habibi, the final blow,” and then he hit me on the head with the helmet. I fell on the floor and completely passed out. I don’t know how much time passed exactly. I woke up when water was poured on my head. I was writhing in pain. The guard took me up the stairs leading to cell 15 in wing 21. He took me to a cell, where I met the prisoner Mahmoud Baker Abu al-Hawa. The guard shouted and mocked him: “Mahmoud Baker Abu al-Khara.”

In this wing, they played loud music all night. Rap songs, and most of the time the song “Am Yisrael Chai” (“the People of Israel Live”). They cursed our mothers on the loudspeakers. The cell had a shower with no door, and it had water for only one hour a day. We showered in cold water. We got a small bottle of shampoo. Because of the lack of water, most of us suffered from stomach aches and constipation.

For several days after that, they attacked us and prisoners in nearby cells several times for no reason, beat us severely with clubs and kicked us. On one occasion, they left us beaten on the floor and we stayed lying like that for several hours. Another time they beat a diabetic prisoner I know particularly hard. Every time they came in for roll call, I was afraid they would attack us, even though sometimes nothing happened. They often showed up for roll call in large numbers and with dogs.

One day, roll call was delayed until 8:00 P.M. The other prisoners and I were very scared, because we didn’t know what was going on. Before they reached our wing, I heard an ambulance siren. I told the prisoners in the cell that there was a dead prisoner. I was terrified of what would happen to us. That evening, the IRF came in and counted us without attacking us.

Then, four female soldiers in tight clothes and an officer entered the cell and played loud music. The female soldiers started to dance obscenely, shamelessly. They screamed and made fun of us, and then some guards joined them and danced with them, while the officer stood at the cell’s doorway, watching. He filmed us on his phone, and then everyone quickly left the cell and closed the door. I was terrified. I was sure the unit would storm the room. I expected them to beat us after that, but we were surprised it didn’t happen.

Three days later, we found out a prisoner named Thaer Abu ‘Asab really did die at Negev Prison on 19 November 2023.

I was supposed to be released on 30 November 2023, but because of the war they extended the detention for me and for other detainees. My new release order was set for 15 April 2024.

On 6 December 2023, the prison administration left the lights on all night. I turned off the light in the cell because we couldn’t sleep. During morning roll call, the officer asked who turned off the light, and then he and other guards beat me and the other prisoners on the head and then they left. After about an hour, a guard came and told me I had a court hearing to approve the detention. He asked if I wanted to go and I said yes. During the hearing, I told the judge that we were being beaten and attacked, and that our privacy and rights were violated. The judge claimed that the beatings had stopped. I told him: “They beat us today, Your Honor.” He put his hands on his head and said nothing.

The officer was there, and he looked at me menacingly. Then, he handcuffed me from behind, even though the other prisoners who had hearings were handcuffed in front. As soon as I went back into the wing, escorted by two guards I know, one of them kicked my leg and the other took the slippers I was wearing and hit me on the head. When I advanced a little, the guards attacked me again. One of them kicked me from behind and knocked me to the floor and then he beat me badly. He took a metal hammer and hit me on my lower back and right thigh and then he hit my testicles again and I started screaming.

Then they took me to the cell and cursed me and God. The prisoners in the room were afraid because they thought the attacks and beatings had resumed, after they had beaten us less since Abu ‘Asab’s death. I explained to them that I was beaten only because I told the judge what was happening to us.

After that, the beatings really did stop completely, but the degrading treatment from the guards continued, and so did the use of loud music all day and all night as well as the policy of starvation and denying medical treatment. We also suffered terribly from the cold.

At the end of December, I proposed to the prisoners to hold a public dawn prayer. After the prayer, the prison administration came and took our blankets and mattresses for the day. They were returned only at night.

On 30 December 2023, they took all the prisoners from the cell to the yard, sat us there on the floor with our hands cuffed behind our backs and put black plastic bags over our heads. One of the guards pressed on my metal handcuffs with his leg and told me “die”. From there, we were taken one by one to the intelligence officer’s room, still handcuffed and with the bags on our heads. The officer took the bag off my head and introduced himself as “Captain Ilan.” He said I was inciting against them during prayer. Then, he forced us to strip down to our underwear. Female prison guards grabbed us by our cuffed hands and led us naked back to the cells, and on the way, they swore and laughed at us. We saw them when they took the bags off our heads. When we got to the cell, they threw our clothes inside.

During the last two months of my detention, I was transferred several times between cells in different wings, and so were other prisoners. In some cases, during the transfer, there was violence, tight handcuffing and searches. One time, they searched us with a hand-held metal detector and the guard hit me in the testicles with it. The food we got was still very poor. At night, I constantly worried that my administrative detention would be extended.

On 14 April 2024, one of the guards, who usually treated us well and never hit a single prisoner, came to the cell door and said to me: “What happened to you is a shame on Israel [...] We are a despicable country.”

The next day, 15 April 2024, the same guard announced over the cell’s loudspeaker that eight prisoners were going to be released, without mentioning names. Then they took me and seven other prisoners out of the cell. Before we left the room, we were handcuffed behind our backs and blindfolded. During the transfer, they beat some of us, but not me at first. They put us somewhere in the prison, on the floor. Then a guard came and put his shoe on my neck from behind. He hit the prisoner who was in front of me with a stick on the back, until he screamed in pain. Then they took us for a body search. There were IRF people there. They ordered me to undress and then searched me and ordered me to bend down and stand up twice to humiliate me. Then one of the IRF men hit me on the right hip, and I started screaming until he moved away.

Then they took us to interrogation. The guard checked my file and then said: “That’s not him.” He didn’t recognize me from my photos. I lost 55 kg during my time in detention.

Then they took us to interrogation. The guard checked my file and then said: “That’s not him.” He didn’t recognize me from my photos. I lost 55 kg during my time in detention. My hair and beard grew very thick and my facial features changed. He asked me a few more questions and checked more details until he was convinced that it was really me. Then they took me to a waiting room meant for 10 people, but they crammed 23 into it. We stayed there for four hours. There were no windows in the room, and we were forced to kneel. When the guard came, we had to put our hands on our heads.

Then the people from the Nachshon unit came. They’re responsible for transporting prisoners between prisons. They tied our hands and feet with metal cuffs and forced us to run fast to the bus. When I went up the steps of the bus, one of them punched me on the right side of the body. And then, when I went through the door, he kicked my butt. They did it to everyone.

The bus took us to Meitar Crossing, south of a-Dhahiriyah in Hebron District. When we arrived and I got off the bus, one of them pulled my hair; another punched me in the head, and then another kicked me from behind forcefully.

When I was arrested, I weighed 125 kg, and now I weigh 65. I still suffer from pain in most parts of my body, especially stomach pain. My blood sugar is unbalanced, and I’m still getting treatment. I’m also mentally very unwell. The prisoners’ screams still echo in my ears. I can’t take any screaming or yelling, and I’m generally terrified of loud noises. I’ve also developed a phobia of dogs. Once, when my wife gave my son a carrot to chew because he’s teething, I got very frightened, and when he put the carrot in his mouth, I took it from his hand right away and threw it out. I can’t eat solid food, only some liquids and soup. I’m terrified of being arrested again. I don’t think I’d survive such torment again. It was truly hell. I’m also very worried about the detainees who stayed in the prison hell after I was released. The torture people are going through in Israeli prisons now is indescribable. It might even be worse than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Manal al-Ja’bari on 18 April 2024