Hurryyat: Fact Sheet on Sade Teman Camp “Israel’s Guantanamo”
Introduction:
The Israeli occupation authorities have acknowledged earlier this week the martyrdom of 36 detainees from the Gaza Strip in the “Sade Teman camp”, which demands highlighting the grave violations that the Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip are exposed to from the moment of arrest from the streets and homes during ongoing military operations, to when they are subjected to the field interrogation directly for the purpose of obtaining information; which has led to the death of dozens of them in the field or inside detention and interrogation camps, most notably the Sade Teman camp, in which Gaza Strip detainees are held.
Testimonies of people who were detained in this camp and who were recently released indicate that this site witnesses brutal, systematic torture programs in which all methods of torture are used, including electricity, dogs, beatings, with permanent and continuous handcuffing. Some of them are also transferred after undergoing multiple and intense stages of torture to the Anatot camp next to the town of Anata or Ofer prison near the city of Ramallah, where they are subjected to continuous torture.
Introducing the Sade Teman Camp “Israel’s Guantanamo”:
It is located to the eastern side of Juhr al-Dik, inside the Gaza envelope, in the area between the envelope and the Beersheba settlement. This camp is a military air base that the Israeli occupation authorities converted into a detention center for the people of the Gaza Strip after recently building a group of barracks there, the number of which is estimated according to the statements of some of the released people to be approximately fifteen large barracks, each of which can accommodate, according to estimates, 130 to 150 detainees.
It is worth noting that work is still underway to create new barracks inside the detention center to accommodate a larger number of Gaza Strip detainees, to whom the occupation authorities apply the status of illegal fighters and deprive them of all legal guarantees provided to them by international laws and customs.
Extreme/harsh detention conditions inside Sade Teman detention center:
One of the detainees, who spent 21 days in Sade Teman detention center, said that the detainees there are between the ages of 18 and 70 years old, and are forced to sit inside the barracks on their knees, with their legs and hands tied, all day long, where they are forced to sit in one position in organized lines, each detainee next to another, and this goes on from six o’clock in the morning upon organizing until one o’clock at night when they are allowed to sleep on a piece of leather 2 cm thick, without the removal of their shackles or cuffs. What is known as the “Shaweesh” or room supervisors will cover all the detainees when they sleep and also help them enter the bathroom to relieve themselves when they are given permission to do so. Moreover, it is worth noting that none of the Gaza Strip detainees are brought before the competent judicial authorities.
Using electricity, dogs, and pepper gas to torture Gazan detainees
According to the testimonies of some of the released detainees, those who were brought from Gaza to Sade Teman were received in the reception barracks and are subjected to harsh torture conditions for the first week, such as, continuous sitting in a specific rigid position and deprivation of sleep, after which they can be transferred to another barracks (Marduan) where they are subjected to interrogation by the intelligence service. Furthermore, one of the detainees reported that he was brought, with his hands and feet tied, and his eyes blindfolded, into a pool of water, where he felt the water touching his feet from the bottom. He stayed in it for five minutes and felt intense electricity shoot throughout his body until he lost consciousness and no longer felt anything around him. After he woke up from the coma, he found himself lying on the ground in a barracks with his entire body in a state of numbness. He also reported that one of the detainees (M. T.), 28 years old, had a heart condition and was martyred in front of him after dogs attacked him inside the unit, and as a result he stopped moving completely. They left him there for half an hour until they took him out of his unit. He later learned from the supervisor that he (M.T.) had died because of the terror the dogs had caused him. He also mentioned that pepper spraying on the faces of detainees is widely used, which causes them great pain.
Failure to provide medical treatment to Gazan detainees
Some of the detainees who were released stated in their testimony that there are dozens of elderly detainees in the “Israel’s Guantanamo” camp who have chronic diseases (diabetes, high blood pressure), but are not provided with any medication, as many diabetic detainees were exposed to diabetic burnout attacks due to the severe shortage of food, exposure to cold weather in the past months, and severe torture. One of the detainees indicated in his testimony that the only medicine allowed to be given is the Acamol pill, and not regularly. Likewise, detainees are generally threatened with death, as well as the sick among them, who are demanding medicine instead of provision of treatment.
Transfer and the continuation torture journey from Sade Teman prison to Ofer prison
One of the detainees reported that he was transferred from the (Mardwan) interrogation barracks to another barracks, and he stayed there for one day while his hands and feet were shackled. After that, he was transferred at night using a means of transportation for a period that he could not estimate, and along the way he was severely beaten by the soldiers, using their hands and feet. He also reported that he arrived in the late hours of the night at a place that he later learned was Ofer Prison, specifically Section 23, where he was placed in a room with five detainees, with his hands tied in front and his legs with iron\metallic shackles.
He stated that he stayed in Ofer Prison for 25 days, during which he and his fellow detainees were subjected to beatings and abuse as the repressive forces entered the room at a rate of once every four days, where they used dogs and pepper gas to torture them. He also mentioned that the dogs’ claws were digging into his back and causing him pain. It was very severe, and the steel grille over the dog’s mouth was hitting his head and body hard, causing him great pain, in addition to terror due to the loud and continuous sound of dogs barking inside the room, as well as severe beatings, cursing, and death threats, which led to him urinating himself every time the room was broken into, due to the severity of the terror caused by the use of dogs and the result of the severe beatings and pain caused by the pepper gas that was sprayed in his face.
Return from Ofer to Sade Teman detention center and release of the detainee
After the period of severe torture to which Gazan detainees are subjected to in Ofer Prison, some of the detainees who were scheduled to be released are returned in the same way they came to Sade Teman Prison, and they are subjected to severe beatings and torture along the way, which takes several hours, as one of the detainees reported that he was beaten and severely attacked by soldiers on the way from Ofer Prison to Sade Teman Detention Center (“Israel’s Guantanamo”). Moreover, upon his arrival, he was placed in a barracks for four days while his hands and feet were tied the whole time. He stated that on the third day he was presented to a doctor for the first time and underwent medical examinations. On the fourth day, he was released and sent via the Kerem Abu Salem border to Gaza Strip. He reported that he could not walk more than five meters continuously and slowly as a result of torture with electricity and could not breathe well due to constantly inhaling pepper gas.
Gaza Strip detainees released from Sade Teman (returned from death to life)
When Palestinian families in Gaza lose contact with their children in the areas of Israeli military operations, it is not possible to know their conditions, “Are they alive or dead?” For their families, they most likely died as a result of the policy of on-site executions committed by the occupation authorities on an ongoing basis in the field of operations, in a best-case scenario, they are considered to be forcibly disappeared, and it’s impossible to know their fate.
When Gaza Strip detainees are brought into “Israel’s Guantanamo” Sde Teman camp, they become missing, no one knows any information about them, and they are subjected to all kinds of torture that have led to the death of dozens of them. The Israeli army has confessed of killing at least 36 detainees since October 7th. This large number can be considered an indication of the possibility of a rise in the number of martyrs among Gazan detainees in detention camps beyond the announced number, given the brutal methods of torture used on them, and it can be linked to the issue of finding many mass graves of Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip. Accordingly, for Gazan detainees who were released after spending periods inside these detention centers, getting out of the concentration camps and enforced disappearance in Sde Teman and Anatot is a new birth for them after their forced loss of freedom without any significant information.
Finally, the Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights “Hurryyat” calls on the International Red Cross to put pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to allow them to visit detainees in the Gaza Strip in all detention centers, especially the Sade Teman prison “Israel’s Guantanamo”, as the Red Cross plays the role of the protecting state in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which stipulates the protection of civilians in times of war. Hurryyat also calls on the United Nations institutions and local and international human rights institutions to launch a campaign on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 16th, in order to call for the closure of Israel’s Guantanamo camp, investigate all the crimes occurring there, and identify the numbers of victims of brutal torture committed there, as well as reveal the fate of the thousands forcibly disappeared Gazan residents, and hold Israeli military officials accountable for committing these brutal crimes as war criminals.
10 June 2024