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“Graveyards”: Palestinian Detainees Freed from Israeli Prisons Show Signs of “Unprecedented” Torture, Starvation

“Graveyards”: Palestinian Detainees Freed from Israeli Prisons Show Signs of “Unprecedented” Torture, Starvation

News February 27, 2025
“Graveyards”: Palestinian Detainees Freed from Israeli Prisons Show Signs of “Unprecedented” Torture, Starvation
Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Palestinian detainees freed from Israeli jails on Thursday under the Gaza ceasefire agreement once again showed signs of torture and starvation. More than 600 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons on Thursday. This was the last batch of the prisoner exchange deal under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israeli prison authorities forced the freed Palestinian detainees to wear shirts with threatening phrases to humiliate them. The white shirt carries text in Arabic that says: “Israel will pursue its enemies and will neither forget nor forgive them.” Many of the detainees were wearing the shirt inside out or seen taking them off and stamping on them following their arrival. Several Palestinians were transported in ambulances to the European Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza due to the severity of their injuries. The Palestinian Red Crescent received an injured Palestinian detainee who was in a coma for months from Israel. Kazem Zawahreh was transported to Al-Hussein Hospital in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank. Alaa al-Bayari, a Palestinian released to Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that he witnessed “torture, beating, humiliation and everything you can imagine” while in Israeli prison. He met his one-year-old daughter for the first time. “We were kept naked, water was thrown on us and then they used electricity” to torture, he said. Yahya Shrida, a Palestinian detainee who was released to Ramallah, described Israeli prisons as graveyards. “We have been taken out of suffering. It was as if we have been dug out of our own graves. No prisoner has had the experience of having their own release delayed twice,” he told Reuters, referring to Israel’s suspension of the release of last time’s batch of Palestinian detainees. “What we have been through is a situation that the mountains can’t carry. It is very hard to explain; it is very hard to talk about what we have been through.” Some Palestinians had their limbs cut off and others were suffering from severe injuries due to Israeli torture in detention. One clip shows a family member mourning the emaciated condition of his released relative, saying: “Look at the difference, oh my God!” Another freed Palestinian detainee cried, "The detainees are in grave risk... Do not give up on the detainees’ file. This is the cry of a freed detainee from Gaza who endured harsh conditions inside the Israeli prisons and was released today as part of the current deal.” Most of the detainees also suffer from skin diseases, and one has been hospitalized overnight due to lung fibrosis. Scabies medication was administered to all freed detainees to address the widespread infections. Freed Palestinian detainee Nael Al-Bargouthi, the world's longest-serving political prisoner, also said, “Israeli occupation abused all detainees in prisons, subjected us to torture, and treated us as war criminals. Palestinian detainees suffer from severe fractures due to abuse and beatings by Israeli occupation forces.” “Every time prisoners are released, we find the prisoners’ bodies reflecting the level of crimes committed against them, including torture that is unprecedented in its level after October 7, starvation crimes, systematic medical crimes, and the infection of a number of them with scabies, in addition to the severe beatings that the prisoners were subjected to before their release, which continued for days according to many of their testimonies, and which in some cases led to rib fractures,” the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said in a statement. “The Prisoner’s Society confirms again that the occupation practices organized terrorism against the released prisoners and their families, through several methods that have been monitored, the most prominent of which are the severe beatings that the released prisoners were subjected to, and the threats that reached the point of killing if any reception party was organized or if the family showed any sign of reception.” “Following the release of the seven batches from the first phase of the prisoner exchange deal, which included 1,777 Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons, the released detainees have once again revealed the extent of unprecedented torture crimes,” the group said. “These include medical abuses, starvation, and brutal beatings that continued until the last days of their release. These actions represent a long-standing, systematic history of crimes perpetrated by the occupation, which escalated dangerously since the start of the genocide campaign. These crimes led to the martyrdom of dozens of detainees during the bloodiest period in the history of the prisoner movement,” the group added. This week, two Palestinian detainees from Gaza died in Israeli detention after being abducted from Gaza during the Israeli assault. Torture was recorded in Israeli detention facilities, resulting in the deaths of at least 60 known detainees since 7 October 2023. Among them are at least 39 detainees from Gaza, the highest number in history, according to the PPS.

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