Geneva - The Israeli army introduced groups of Israeli civilians into detention centres and prisons holding Palestinian prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip, permitting the civilians to witness torture crimes against the detainees, with many allowed to film them on their own phones.

The released detainees told Euro-Med Monitor that the Israeli soldiers had purposefully presented them before Israeli civilians, falsely claiming that they were fighters affiliated with Palestinian armed factions and that they had taken part in the 7 October attack on Israeli towns on Gaza Strip borders.

According to testimony received by Euro-Med Monitor, groups of ten to twenty Israeli civilians at a time were permitted to watch and laughingly film Palestinian prisoners and detainees in their underwear while Israeli army soldiers subjected them to physical abuse, including beating them with metal batons, electric sticks, and pouring hot water on their heads. The detainees were also verbally abused.

Palestinian Omar Abu Mudallala, 43, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “I was arrested at the checkpoint set up near the Kuwait roundabout, which separates Gaza City from the central region, as part of the Israeli random arrest campaigns. I was subjected to all types of torture and abuse for approximately 52 days,” pointing out that Israeli soldiers “brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture.”

Abu Mudallala added: “The Israeli army brought a number of Israeli civilians into our detention centres while beating us and telling them, ‘These are Hamas terrorists who killed you and raped your women on 7 October,’ while the Israeli civilians were filming us being beaten, abused, and tortured while making fun of us.”

Abu Mudallalasaid that “one of the detainees who speaks Hebrew tried to explain to the Israeli civilians that we are civilians and we had nothing to do with any military activities, but that also did not help. However, he was subjected to severe psychological and physical torture. It was really shameful to bring Israeli citizens to record our torture for being allegedly involved in killing and rape incidents.”