Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian detainees could amount to ‘sexualized torture’: UN

In a statement, the UN representative said Palestinian men and women are reportedly being subject to “widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape and gang rape, repeated and humiliating strip searches and prolonged forced nudity, beatings and electrocution of genitals and anus, insertion of objects into detainees’ anuses, inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers, and photographing or filming of naked or partially undressed detainees in humiliating positions”.

Special Representative Patten recalled the reported recent case of the Palestinian male detainee who was hospitalised in July with severe injuries including to his rectum, due to sexual violence allegedly perpetrated in the Sde Teiman military base.

“I am particularly concerned about recent attempts by some Israeli political actors, to interfere with ongoing justice processes and/or to justify the use of these methods. Sexual violence and sexualized torture in detention settings must never be normalised,” she added.

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.

Human rights experts say despite the Israeli regime’s denial of “systematic abuse” of defenseless Palestinian inmates, the sheer number of consistent accounts from former detainees, coupled with the testimony of Israeli personnel at the site, proves a disturbing pattern of mistreatment and torture at the Sde Teiman.

In total since October, dozens of Palestinian detainees had died either at the Sde Teiman prison site or after being transferred to nearby hospitals, the report revealed.

Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip has killed almost 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 95,000 others, according to local health authorities.

An ongoing blockade of the enclave has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, leaving much of the region in ruins.

Israel faces accusations of genocide for its actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.