Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service
The Israeli army has approved the return to reserve duty of soldiers suspected of torturing and raping a Palestinian detainee.
Army chief Eyal Zamir authorised the move for members of Unit 100, Haaretz reported on Thursday.
Five soldiers from the unit, tasked with guarding prisoners, were implicated in the abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre in 2024.
Last month, the charges against the soldiers were dropped. No internal military investigation into the incident has been carried out.
The abuse was captured on surveillance cameras and leaked to Israeli media in August 2024, a month after a far-right mob rioted over the questioning of the soldiers by military police.
The footage shows detained Palestinians lying on the floor with their hands bound and eyes covered.
A group of reservists is then seen taking one detainee aside and attempting to conceal their actions using riot shields.
The detainee they took aside was taken to the hospital after the incident with broken ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured bowel and severe anal injuries.
In February, five soldiers were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm.
The original indictment said that "for 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged him along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head".
The indictment also stated that one soldier stabbed the detainee in the buttocks, causing a tear in the rectal wall.
Professor Yoel Donchin, who served as a medical officer at the Sde Teiman facility, told Haaretz he could not believe an Israeli guard could do such a thing.
“He arrived, and we saw he had a stab wound in the anus,” Donchin said. “I saw how the soldiers behaved there, how they brought in detainees and forced them to sing songs. I saw a wounded man who had been abused and beaten severely.”
Two suspects were found to have failed polygraph tests when asked whether they had inserted an object into the detainee’s anus or were concealing the identity of the person responsible. They denied both, but the examiner concluded they were being deceptive.
‘Calculated cruelty’
Despite this, Military Advocate General Itai Ofir last month ordered the indictment in the case to be withdrawn. He cited several reasons, including a “defence of justice” argument linked to “the conduct of senior officials in the military prosecution and the IDF law enforcement system in this case, and its exceptional and unprecedented circumstances”.
He also pointed to “complexities regarding the existing evidentiary basis” and the release of the detainee back to the Gaza Strip, which created further legal difficulties.
The Israeli military almost never holds to account soldiers accused of abusing Palestinians.
Reports of abuse by Israeli personnel against Palestinian detainees have surged since October 2023, including allegations of torture and sexual violence.
Last month, UN experts warned that torture had become “state doctrine” in Israel, citing what they described as the “systematic torture of Palestinians”, shielded by decades of impunity and political cover.
“Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine.
'Sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilise, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people'
– United Nations' inquiry
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said earlier this month that sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza appeared to be an “organised state policy”.
The group released a report compiling testimonies from former detainees, detailing sexual violence, including rape with objects and the use of trained dogs.
One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman from northern Gaza who was held at the Sde Teiman detention centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over two days.
She said she was left shackled, naked and bleeding overnight before the soldiers returned to continue the assault.
She described wishing for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.
She also said she was filmed throughout the ordeal. During interrogation, soldiers showed her the footage while she was suspended by her wrists, threatening to publish it if she did not “cooperate”.
Numerous reports by rights groups and investigations by media outlets, including Middle East Eye, have documented allegations of widespread sexual violence against Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.
A United Nations' inquiry last year accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilise, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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