Feb. 9, 2025
By Mahmoud Majadalah for Arab 48 – In a new testimony, released prisoner, Adham Mansour revealed serious violations against Palestinian detainees, including physical and sexual assaults using dogs, in addition to starvation and medical neglect.
These testimonies come amid human rights reports confirming the occupation’s systematic torture of prisoners.
The released Palestinian prisoner, Adham Mansour (45 years old), a resident of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, revealed shocking details about the conditions of detention and the suffering of prisoners inside Israeli prisons, including the use of dogs to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners.
On Saturday, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said that the conditions of those released from Israeli prisons reflect the level of “atrocities” to which they were subjected, noting that most of those released after the war of extermination suffer from health problems.
The club added that “after 183 prisoners were released (…) the prisoners’ bodies, their health conditions, and the need for some of them to be transferred to the hospital, reflected the level of atrocities that the prisoners were subjected to over the past period in the occupation’s prisons.”
In a press interview, the released prisoner, Adham Mansour said: “We were subjected to beatings, humiliation, and poor conditions, in addition to the attacks of dogs. There are prisoners who were raped by dogs.” He added, “I weighed 80 kilograms, but after the prison period it reached 55 kilograms.”
Mansour stressed that the detainees suffer from “countless” diseases, with no medical treatment available. He pointed out that the prison sections are extremely crowded, with each tent housing more than 45 people in a small space that is not suitable for this large number of prisoners.
He explained that he was unable to sleep for three months due to the severe itching that afflicted him as a result of a skin disease (scabies), amidst deliberate medical neglect by the prison administration.
Mansour recounted the harsh living conditions inside the tents where the prisoners are staying, where they do not have the minimum requirements for a decent life, noting that the severe overcrowding has increased their suffering and made health conditions deteriorate further.
The testimony of Mansour, who was captured by Israel on December 22, 2023, highlights the serious violations that prisoners are subjected to, from ill-treatment to disastrous health conditions, from beating detainees to placing them in crowded places and not providing treatment for sick and injured prisoners in the occupation prisons.
On June 27, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that the Israeli army’s use of police dogs to attack Palestinian civilians during its military operations in the Gaza Strip, in addition to their use to terrorize, maul and rape prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention centers, is “a systematic and widely practiced behavior.”
This testimony is not the first. On July 29, 2024, 10 reserve soldiers who worked as guards at the Sde Teiman camp were suspended on charges of assaulting a Palestinian prisoner, including sexual assault, which resulted in serious injuries.
The next day, Haaretz reported that the Palestinian prisoner who was sexually assaulted at the Israeli military base of Sde Teiman “suffers serious injuries, including a ruptured intestine.”
Since the Israeli army began its ground invasion of Gaza on October 27, 2023, as part of its genocidal war on the Strip, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been arrested, including women, children, health workers and civil defense personnel.
Over the past months, the Israeli army has released dozens of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in separate batches, most of whom suffered from deteriorating health conditions and bore signs of torture on their bodies.
Mansour’s release came as part of the fifth batch of a prisoner exchange deal, which is being implemented as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, which went into effect on January 19.
Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli prisons talk about being subjected to starvation, beatings, and psychological torture, with the same thing affecting their outward appearance.
This is the fifth batch of prisoners released by Israel, which included the release of 183 prisoners, 42 of whom are from the West Bank, three from Jerusalem, and 138 from Gaza, including 111 who were arrested after October 7, 2023.
The prisoner exchange deal under the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, in its first phase, includes the release of 1,737 Palestinian prisoners, with this phase extending over a period of 6 weeks, in weekly batches.
