On 11 May, CNN exposed Israel’s harrowing treatment of dozens of Gazan prisoners held hostage in the Sde Teiman desert camp-turned-detention centre.
In the report, which stirred widespread condemnation, whistle-blowers revealed that Gazan hostages were subjected to “extreme physical restraint” and “stripped down of anything that resembles human beings”.
When The New Arab interviewed several of the 76 Gazan prisoners released just days after the CNN report was published, it became apparent that these abuses were not exclusive to that one prison.
Sami al-Ghoula, a 53-year-old father of eight, describes the torture to have been unending for the two months he was detained. Rounded up on 14 March from Al-Shifa Hospital where he and his family had been displaced, he was handcuffed and had his face covered before being shoved with other detainees into Israeli military vehicles and taken to warehouses made of corrugated iron, metal nets, and barbed wires – known locally as brixat…..more