‘They told me to strip.’ Former Palestinian detainee says he was sexually abused in an Israeli prison

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual violence.

Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison.

“They told me to strip,” the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his eight months in Israeli detention. “That’s when I knew I was beginning my journey to hell.”

He and other Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia were handcuffed, blindfolded, and transported on trucks “like animals,” he recalled.

No one heard from him for eight months.

On May 23, Saja Mishreqi, a lawyer at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), who represented Salem, was informed by the Israeli Supreme Court that he was in Ktzi’ot Prison, a detention facility in the Negev run by the Israel Prison Service (IPS). He was eventually released without charge on August 1.

Ordered to strip naked

During interrogations, Salem said, he would be asked: “Where are the hostages? Where are Hamas’ weapons? Are you Hamas? Are you Qassam (Hamas’ military wing)? Are you Islamic Jihad?”

Salem alleges to have been beaten, verbally abused, had hot water poured on him, and told by soldiers that the rest of his family had been killed.

But the worst part, he said, was the sexual abuse.

Salem said much of prisoners’ time in detention was spent in their underwear, but before each interrogation session, soldiers would order him to strip naked.

“They would bring the metal detector and run it all over our bodies, then they would hover it over private parts and hit me there,” he said. As he crouched in pain, naked, with five or six soldiers looking, he said he felt the troops violate him from behind.

“With the pain, I would lean forward. Then suddenly, they would push it (a baton) into my butt,” he said. “Inside.”

After interrogation, he was given only “seconds” to put his underwear back on, he said, adding that any perceived delay in doing so would result in another beating from the soldiers.

The IDF added that it “cannot address the conditions of his arrest and detention for most of that period,” noting that misconduct during detention is “contrary to the law and IDF orders, and is therefore strictly prohibited.”

Salem was released to the Gaza Strip on August 1 after an assessment found that releasing him wouldn’t pose a risk to national security, the IDF said, adding that he was brought before a judge in a district court for a judicial review during his detention.

Taunted with pictures of exhumed bodies

Salem said an interrogator showed him a picture of what he was led to believe were exhumed remains of six family members he had buried in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Salem said the interrogator taunted him, making him count six bodies in the picture.

“On what grounds do you take away bodies and desecrate them?” Salem recalled telling the interrogator. “These bodies are ours. We need to bury them.”

The interrogator responded that the bodies “might be hostages” abducted by Hamas on October 7, to which Salem said he responded, crying: “My nephews, are they hostages? Five years old?”

More than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 injured in Israel’s assault on the strip, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Leaked surveillance footage last month from the Sde Teiman prison provided a rare glimpse into the facility.

CCTV video obtained by Israel’s Channel 12 showed Israeli soldiers selecting one of more than two dozen Palestinian detainees lying on the ground. Behind a wall of shields obstructing the view of security cameras, the soldiers allegedly sodomize the detainee. The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries to his rectum, according to Israeli non-profit organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Israeli military has declined to comment on the video.

Shortly after the incident, 10 Israeli soldiers were arrested over the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the facility, according to IDF. Five have so far been released, and five are under house arrest.

‘Systematic policies’

Mishreqi said that Salem was detained under Israel’s controversial Unlawful Combatants Law, which rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has said “strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights.”

The law permits the military to detain people for up to 30 days without a detention order, after which they must be transferred to prison, according to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization (NGO). Over 4,000 Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been detained by Israel since the war began, PCATI said in a report last month, adding that the law deprives detainees of their rights as prisoners of war and the protections for civilian populations under humanitarian law in occupied territories.

As of April, more than 9,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli prisons, including more than 3,500 without charge, according to Addameer Prisoner’s Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO. The figure doesn’t include detainees from Gaza, the group said.

Salem is one of many former detainees who have recalled harrowing stories from their time in Israeli prisons to human rights groups and news outlets. Their testimonies have led to calls for reforms across all of Israel’s prisons.

Israel has greatly reduced the number of people being held at Sde Teiman in the wake of calls for its closure. In June, a state attorney told Israel’s Supreme Court that hundreds of Palestinian detainees have been transferred out of the facility.

A report published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem this month documented “abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians” held in Israeli custody since October 7. The report, which collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians, showed “the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy.” The IDF has repeatedly denied allegations of systematic abuse.

Salem said there were some 150 detainees with him in the second facility where he was held.

On the day of his release, Salem said he was taken to the Gaza border by the IDF but was told he couldn’t return to his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. He is now living in a displacement camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

He has moved from detention tents to displacement tents throughout his ordeal, he said, and the memories of the abuse he said he experienced continue to live with him.

He has yet to reunite with his wife and children, who remain in northern Gaza, and can only communicate with them by phone. Two of his children require surgeries for injuries sustained in the Israeli airstrike, he said.