Rula Alqawasmi @Alqawasmi_Rula – 26 June 2024
More terrible than Guantanamo: the Israeli “Sde Teman” detention center. Rape and sexual assaults, handcuffing around the clock, masked guards, and severe corporal punishment. Khaled Mahajna is the first lawyer to visit the detention center nicknamed the “death camp.”
He says in an interview that he will never forget what he saw and heard there. The situation there is more terrifying than anything we heard about Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, this is how lawyer Khaled Mahajneh described the Sde Timan detention center after his visit to it last Wednesday. Since the beginning of the war, more than 4,000 Palestinians from Gaza, who were arrested after October 7, have been detained at the military base in the Negev, which has been converted into a detention center. Some of them have been released, and most are still detained.
After a long struggle, Mahajna was able to obtain permission to visit journalist Muhammad Arab, correspondent for the Al-Arabi network, who was arrested about 100 days ago in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
This is the first visit by a lawyer to a detention camp, from which Mahajna returned shocked by the harsh and unbearable conditions in which he is being held. There are detainees. Detainees’ eyes are covered 24 hours a day, and their hands are tied behind their backs at all hours of the day. They sleep in a bent position on the floor without a cover, mattress or other bedding, and use their shoes as pillows. The iron handcuffs are removed from the detainee’s hands only when he is allowed to shower, once a week, for only one minute, and anyone who exceeds the one-minute limit is severely punished.
Detainees do not change their clothes for 50 days, and are allowed to shave after long weeks of detention. The facility’s menu includes some white bread and a piece of cucumber or tomato daily. “Prisoners are prevented from talking to each other, even though there are more than 100 people detained in the ward, some of them elderly and minors. They are not allowed to pray or even read the Qur’an.”
Mahajna also heard about cases of rape of detainees by guards. Six prisoners were raped and sexually assaulted in front of other prisoners simply because they disobeyed orders inside the prison. Many prisoners were killed due to violent interrogations just last month. Other injured detainees had their limbs amputated or had bullets removed from their bodies without anesthesia. They were not treated by doctors. Rather, by nursing students, while police dogs surround the prisoners at all times.
Rula Alqawasmi @Alqawasmi_Rula – 26 June 2024