Palestinian prisoners released under the Gaza ceasefire agreement have provided harrowing accounts of systematic abuse, describing Israeli prisons as “slaughterhouses” where they endured torture, starvation, and psychological warfare.
As part of the first phase of the agreement to end the two-year Israeli-American genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, a total of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails, along with 1,718 Palestinians detained since October 7, 2023, were released on Monday.
The freed Palestinians said they were beaten and humiliated, describing the Israeli prisons they were held in as “slaughterhouses.”
“We were in a slaughterhouse, not a prison. Unfortunately, we were in a slaughterhouse called the Ofer prison,” Abdallah Abu Rafe said.
“They always take the mattresses away. The food situation is difficult. Things are difficult there,” he added.
Palestinian journalist prisoner Shadi Abu Seed gave a harrowing account of life inside an Israeli prison after his release.
“I went hungry for the past two years. I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They kept us naked. They beat us while we were naked day and night. We were tortured,” he said.
Al Jazeera correspondent Ibrahim al-Khalili’s brother, Mohammed, who was held for more than 19 months without charge, described his ordeal as a “big struggle.”
“We were beaten and humiliated. We suffered a lot. But thank God, it’s all over now,” he said.
Prisoners ‘maimed’ in Israeli jails
Director General of the Shifa Medical Complex, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said the recently released Palestinian prisoners are arriving with severe physical and psychological conditions, including mutilation and disabilities resulting from systematic torture and medical neglect in Israeli prisons.
He noted that the freed prisoners “have a very poor health and mental condition, and the effects of torture remain on them.”
He emphasized that due to deliberate medical negligence during their imprisonment, “some of them have been mutilated.”
The doctor provided a grim assessment, noting that many of the prisoners had been wounded during the conflict and received no medical care while detained.
This medical crisis is further compounded, he added, by Israel’s imprisonment of a “large number of Palestinian doctors,” which has worsened the healthcare collapse in the Gaza Strip.
More than 10,000 Palestinians remain ‘unlawfully held captive’
Palestinian authorities say over 10,000 Palestinians continue to be unlawfully held in Israeli prisons, despite yesterday’s exchange of captives and prisoners in Gaza.
They also reported that at least 77 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention facilities over the past two years, while around 360 children are still imprisoned.
This comes as Hamas said on Monday that it made all efforts to safeguard the lives of captives in Gaza, “despite the attempts of war criminal [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his terrorist army to target and eliminate them.”
Under a US-mediated ceasefire, Hamas is to hand over 20 living Israeli captives and the bodies of 28 others, while Israel has to release around 2,000 Palestinian abductees, held illegally in Israeli jails.
