Reports of torture in Israel’s Sde Teiman “only represent the tip of iceberg,” UN experts say

Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- A group of 10 UN human rights experts have decried the world’s “silence” on reports of Israeli forces torturing Palestinian detainees, warning that the maltreatment and sexual violence at Israel’s Sde Teiman prison “only represent the tip of the iceberg”.

The independent experts said in a statement they have received “substantiated reports of widespread abuse, torture, sexual assault and rape” of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.

“Countless testimonies by men and women speak of detainees in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds blindfolded and in diapers, stripped naked, deprived of adequate healthcare, food, water and sleep, electrocutions including on their genitals, blackmail and cigarette burns,” they said in the statement.

“In addition, victims spoke of loud music played until their ears bled, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual and gender-based violence.”

The experts called on the international community to ramp up pressure on Israel, stating that the “allegations of gang rape of a Palestinian detainee – now shockingly supported by voices in the Israeli political establishment and society – provide irrefutable evidence that the moral compass is lost”.

They also urged the UN Human Rights Council, in particular, to urgently launch an inquiry into Israeli facilities holding Palestinians.

The experts statement came following the release of a report by Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, on Monday. The report revealed that more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities were converted into a network of camps “dedicated to the abuse” of Palestinian detainees following October 7.

The 118-page report, titled “Welcome to Hell”, is based on 55 testimonies from former detainees from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and I948-occupied territories, the overwhelming majority of them held without being tried.

The interviewees described the abuse in “horrifying detail and chilling similarities,” said B’Tselem.

“Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate in fact as torture camps,” the report said.

The violations include “frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation; prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment”.

B’Tselem said at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7. Some 48 of them were from Gaza.