Hamas blasts Israeli ‘sadism’ as video emerges of Palestinians tortured in jail
Hamas has condemned Israel’s torture and humiliation of Palestinian detainees in Megiddo Prison, calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to document such crimes.
“The humiliation of the Palestinian prisoners in Megiddo Prison by the occupying forces and their Nazi prison service shows the hatred and sadism of the prison guards towards the Palestinians,” Hamas said in a statement.
“These crimes are part of the occupying Israeli regime’s ongoing brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners, which includes torture, mistreatment, starvation, deliberate medical negligence and deprivation of fundamental human rights. As a result, the number of Palestinians who have lost their lives as a result of negligence and torture has surpassed 60,” it added.
Leaked footage from Megiddo Prison has showed Israeli forces abusing Palestinian prisoners and terrorizing them with sniffer dogs.
The video shows dozens of prisoners lying on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs on their stomachs, some of them without clothes, while Israeli security personnel terrorized them with dogs.
In its statement, Hamas called on international human rights organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to document such abuses and other horrific crimes against Palestinian detainees.
It also asked world bodies to take immediate action to pressure Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop their blatant violations of international law and standards concerning prisoners, and to hold Israeli leaders accountable for their continuous crimes.
A former Palestinian prisoner has been diagnosed with leukemia only a week after his release from an Israeli prison.
The ministry of detainees’ and ex-detainees’ affairs in Gaza said, “The occupying Zionist entity, under the supervision of extremist and terrorist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has turned prisons and detention centers into death chambers.”
Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that the incident took place in the security section of the prison, where Israeli prison guards handcuffed the prisoners and abused them.
Palestinian advocacy groups say criminal measures by Israel against all Palestinian prisoners are considered war crimes.
Israel keeps Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards, subjecting them to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.
According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their illegal detention.
