+972 and Local Call report:

In February, Rami was arrested by the Israeli army at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The 42-year-old Palestinian was taken to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center, where, like thousands of Gazans detained there, he endured severe abuse at the hands of the guards. But he was soon transferred out. “I thought I was being returned to Gaza, but I found myself in another prison,” he told +972 and Local Call. That prison was Ofer Camp — a military facility that Israel established during the current war to hold detainees from Gaza, located between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Rami described the facility as no less brutal than Sde Teiman. “I was severely tortured,” he said. “We were forced to kneel with our hands tied from sunrise until midnight. Guards beat us on every part of our bodies. I was given electric shocks every two days.” He stressed that such treatment was not exceptional: “All detainees at Ofer were tortured, beaten, and humiliated. We [all] received food only once a day.”

On March 24, after weeks of detention in these conditions, Rami was released back to Gaza; there were no charges filed against him.

+972 and Local Call obtained testimonies from 19 Palestinians, some of whom are current detainees who spoke through their lawyers at the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, and others who were previously held at Ofer Camp and released back to Gaza. They revealed conditions that are “similar, and in some cases identical” to those at Sde Teiman, as attorney Nadine Abu Arafeh from HaMoked explained. [Continue reading…]