Palestinian prisoners tortured before their release

Palestinian prisoners endure ‘systematic torture’ before their release, monitor says

A victim of Israeli torture who gave testimony to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in February, 2024. (Anadolu Agency)

The Palestinian Prisoners Society has noted severe forms of torture and abuse by Israeli prison guards.

By Mera Aladam, Reposted from Middle East Eye, February 3, 2025

Israel is subjecting Palestinian detainees to violent beatings and humiliation before their release, according to a group that looks after the affairs of Palestinian prisoners.

Abdullah al-Zaghari, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), said in a statement on Sunday that the majority of released Palestinians from Israeli-run prisons as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal are being subjected to “systematic torture days before their release”.

In some of their most recent reports, the monitor group has noted severe forms of torture and abuse, including burning detainees with boiling water and urinating on them.

Zaghari said this was an “Israeli attempt to take revenge on them”, urging the mediators of the ceasefire agreement, the Red Cross team, and other key players to ensure the safety and dignity of those freed while pressuring Israel to stop torturing them.

“The Red Cross must bear the responsibility of caring for the released prisoners and their dignity until they reach their places of residence, in the same way that it ensures the arrival of Israeli prisoners released from the Gaza Strip.

“There are horrific testimonies of prisoners being severely beaten before and after they were released from prison, especially prisoners who were released to the Gaza Strip,” Zaghari added, noting that most prisoners suffer from diseases, including scabies, as a result of the poor conditions they are detained in.

“[This is] evidence of the occupation’s mentality that is trying to break the image of the Palestinian prisoner and distort it in front of his people.”

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs has also reported that most prisoners in Israeli-run prisons “suffer from fatigue, emaciation and weight loss.”

“There are prisoners who have fainted and no doctor or nurse comes to examine them and transfer them to the clinic,” it said.

Torture in Israeli detention

In early August last year, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem accused Israeli authorities of systematically abusing Palestinians in torture camps, subjecting them to severe violence and sexual assault.

Its report, titled “Welcome to Hell”, is based on 55 testimonies from former detainees from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and citizens of Israel. The overwhelming majority of these detainees were held without trial.

Torture was recorded in civilian and military detention facilities across Israel, resulting in the deaths of at least 60 Palestinians in Israeli custody in less than 10 months.

The systematic nature of the abuse across all facilities left “no room to doubt an organized, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

Meanwhile, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed that a quarter of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have been infected with scabies in recent months.

The findings contained in the report, which cited prison officials, were the result of a petition filed by human rights organizations.

Palestinians held by Israel say that their treatment is deliberate rather than the result of neglect.

One prisoner quoted by Haaretz said: “When we asked for treatment, they told us that we are terrorists and must die.”

Physicians for Human Rights said that prisoners were deprived of washing machines in detention and that they were not given enough clothes.

Ameena Altaweel, a researcher at the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies, told MEE that Palestinian human rights institutions have persistently raised the alarm about disease in prisons.

Altaweel said overcrowding was the main reason for the spread of disease, as well as Israeli measures she argues were deliberately employed to inflict suffering, such as not isolating prisoners once an infection is detected and not providing treatment.

There are currently over 10,400 Palestinians imprisoned, with at least 3,376 detained in administrative detention.

Mera Aladam is a writer for Middle East Eye, find more of her works here.

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