Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail
abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center
By CNN's International Investigations and Visuals teams
Fri May 10, 2024
Sde Teiman, Israel
CNN
—
At a military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev
desert, an Israeli working at the facility snapped two photographs of a scene
that he says continues to haunt him.
Rows of men in gray tracksuits are seen sitting on paper-thin mattresses,
ringfenced by barbed wire. All appear blindfolded, their heads hanging heavy
under the glare of floodlights.
A putrid stench filled the air and the room hummed with the men’s murmurs,
the Israeli who was at the facility told CNN. Forbidden from speaking to each
other, the detainees mumbled to themselves.
“We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright.
They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.”
Guards were instructed “to scream uskot” – shut up in Arabic – and told to
“pick people out that were problematic and punish them,” the source added.
A leaked photograph of the detention facility shows a blindfolded man with
his arms above his head.
A leaked photograph of the detention facility shows a blindfolded man with
his arms above his head. Obtained by CNN
CNN spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman
desert camp, which holds Palestinians detained during Israel’s invasion of
Gaza. All spoke out at risk of legal repercussions and reprisals from groups
supportive of Israel’s hardline policies in Gaza.
They paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated
prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of
medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning
it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled
with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.
We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re
not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.
An Israeli whistleblower recounting his experience at Sde Teiman
According to the accounts, the facility some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier
is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from
Gaza are placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where
wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapers and fed
through straws.
“They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said
one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.
“(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of
revenge,” said another whistleblower. “It was punishment for what they (the
Palestinians) did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”
Responding to CNN’s request for comment on all the allegations made in this
report, the Israeli military, known as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a
statement: “The IDF ensures proper conduct towards the detainees in
custody. Any allegation of misconduct by IDF soldiers is examined and dealt
with accordingly. In appropriate cases, MPCID (Military Police Criminal
Investigation’s Division) investigations are opened when there is suspicion of
misconduct justifying such action.”
“Detainees are handcuffed based on their risk level and health status.
Incidents of unlawful handcuffing are not known to the authorities.”
The IDF did not directly deny accounts of people being stripped of their
clothing or held in diapers. Instead, the Israeli military said that the detainees
are given back their clothing once the IDF has determined that they pose no
security risk.
Reports of abuse at Sde Teiman have already surfaced in Israeli and Arab
media after an outcry from Israeli and Palestinian rights groups over
conditions there. But this rare testimony from Israelis working at the facility
sheds further light on Israel’s conduct as it wages war in Gaza, with fresh
allegations of mistreatment. It also casts more doubt on the Israeli
government’s repeated assertions that it acts in accordance with accepted
international practices and law.
CNN has requested permission from the Israeli military to access the Sde
Teiman base. Last month, a CNN team covered a small protest outside its
main gate staged by Israeli activists demanding the closure of the facility.
Israeli security forces questioned the team for around 30 minutes there,
demanding to see the footage taken by CNN’s photojournalist. Israel often
subjects reporters, even foreign journalists, to military censorship on security
issues.
Detained in the desert
The Israeli military has acknowledged partially converting three different
military facilities into detention camps for Palestinian detainees from Gaza
since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, in which Israeli authorities
say about 1,200 were killed and over 250 were abducted, and the
subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 35,000 people according
to the strip’s health ministry. These facilities are Sde Teiman in the Negev
desert, as well as Anatot and Ofer military bases in the occupied West Bank.
The camps are part of the infrastructure of Israel’s Unlawful Combatants
Law, an amended legislation passed by the Knesset last December that
expanded the military’s authority to detain suspected militants.
intro-desktop-v22.jpg
Patrick Gallagher/CNN
The law permits the military to detain people for 45 days without an arrest
warrant, after which they must be transferred to Israel’s formal prison system
(IPS), where over 9,000 Palestinians are being held in conditions that rights
groups say have drastically deteriorated since October 7. Two Palestinian
prisoners associations said last week that 18 Palestinians – including leading
Gaza surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh – had died in Israeli custody over the
course of the war.
The military detention camps – where the number of inmates is unknown –
serve as a filtration point during the arrest period mandated by the Unlawful
Combatants Law. After their detention in the camps, those with suspected
Hamas links are transferred to the IPS, while those whose militant ties have
been ruled out are released back to Gaza.
CNN interviewed over a dozen former Gazan detainees who appeared to
have been released from those camps. They said they could not determine
where they were held because they were blindfolded through most of their
detention and cut off from the outside world. But the details of their accounts
tally with those of the whistleblowers.
Hear from former detainees held inside Sde Teiman
00:52 - Source: CNN
“We looked forward to the night so we could sleep. Then we looked forward
to the morning in hopes that our situation might change,” said Dr.
Mohammed al-Ran, recalling his detainment at a military facility where he
said he endured desert temperatures, swinging from the heat of the day to
the chill of night. CNN interviewed him outside Gaza last month.
Al-Ran, a Palestinian who holds Bosnian citizenship, headed the surgical unit
at northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be shut down and
raided as Israel carried out its aerial, ground and naval offensive.
He was arrested on December 18, he said, outside Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Baptist
Hospital, where he had been working for three days after fleeing his hospital
in the heavily bombarded north.
He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then
dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were
piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the
middle of the desert.
The details in his account are consistent with those of dozens of others
collected by CNN recounting the conditions of arrest in Gaza. His account is
also supported by numerous images depicting mass arrests published on
social media profiles belonging to Israeli soldiers. Many of those images
show captive Gazans, their wrists or ankles tied by cables, in their underwear
and blindfolded.
Al-Ran was held in a military detention center for 44 days, he told CNN. “Our
days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our agony,”
said al-Ran.
“We cried and cried and cried. We cried for ourselves, cried for our nation,
cried for our community, cried for our loved ones. We cried about everything
that crossed our minds.”
Dr. Mohammed Al-Ran headed the surgical unit at Gaza’s Indonesian
hospital, one of the first to be raided and shut down by Israel.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Ran headed the surgical unit at Gaza’s Indonesian
hospital, one of the first to be raided and shut down by Israel. From Social
Media
Al-Ran is pictured on the day of his release from a detention camp, in a
visibly worse physical condition.
Al-Ran is pictured on the day of his release from a detention camp, in a
visibly worse physical condition. From Social Media
A week into his imprisonment, the detention camp’s authorities ordered him
to act as an intermediary between the guards and the prisoners, a role known
as Shawish, “supervisor,” in vernacular Arabic.
According to the Israeli whistleblowers, a Shawish is normally a prisoner who
has been cleared of suspected links to Hamas after interrogation.
The Israeli military denied holding detainees unnecessarily, or using them for
translation purposes. “If there is no reason for continued detention, the
detainees are released back to Gaza,” they said in a statement.
Our days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our
agony.
Former detainee Dr. Mohammed al-Ran
However, whistleblower and detainee accounts – particularly pertaining to
Shawish – cast doubt on the IDF’s depiction of its clearing process. Al-Ran
says that he served as Shawish for several weeks after he was cleared of
Hamas links. Whistleblowers also said that the absolved Shawish served as
intermediaries for some time.
They are typically proficient in Hebrew, according to the eyewitnesses,
enabling them to communicate the guards’ orders to the rest of the prisoners
in Arabic.
For that, al-Ran said he was given a special privilege: his blindfold was
removed. He said this was another kind of hell.
“Part of my torture was being able to see how people were being tortured,”
he said. “At first you couldn’t see. You couldn’t see the torture, the
vengeance, the oppression.
“When they removed my blindfold, I could see the extent of the humiliation
and abasement … I could see the extent to which they saw us not as human
beings but as animals.”
A leaked photograph of an enclosure where detainees in gray tracksuits are
seen blindfolded and sitting on paper-thin mattresses. CNN was able to
geolocate the hangar in the Sde Teiman facility. A portion of this image has
been blurred by CNN to protect the identity of the source.
A leaked photograph of an enclosure where detainees in gray tracksuits are
seen blindfolded and sitting on paper-thin mattresses. CNN was able to
geolocate the hangar in the Sde Teiman facility. A portion of this image has
been blurred by CNN to protect the identity of the source. Obtained by CNN
Al-Ran’s account of the forms of punishment he saw were corroborated by
the whistleblowers who spoke with CNN. A prisoner who committed an
offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms
above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be
zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position.
For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving,
the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a
prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively,
according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran. A whistleblower who worked as
a guard said he saw a man emerge from a beating with his teeth, and some
bones, apparently broken.
When they removed my blindfold, I could see the extent of the humiliation
and abasement … I could see the extent to which they saw us not as human
beings but as animals.
Former detainee Dr. Mohammed Al-Ran
That whistleblower and al-Ran also described a routine search when the
guards would unleash large dogs on sleeping detainees, lobbing a sound
grenade at the enclosure as troops barged in. Al-Ran called this “the nightly
torture.”
“While we were cabled, they unleashed the dogs that would move between
us, and trample over us,” said al-Ran. “You’d be lying on your belly, your face
pressed against the ground. You can’t move, and they’re moving above you.”
The same whistleblower recounted the search in the same harrowing detail.
“It was a special unit of the military police that did the so-called search,” said
the source. “But really it was an excuse to hit them. It was a terrifying
situation.”
“There was a lot of screaming and dogs barking.”
Strapped to beds in a field hospital
Whistleblower accounts portrayed a different kind of horror at the Sde
Teiman field hospital.
“What I felt when I was dealing with those patients is an idea of total
vulnerability,” said one medic who worked at Sde Teiman.
“If you imagine yourself being unable to move, being unable to see what’s
going on, and being completely naked, that leaves you completely exposed,”
the source said. “I think that’s something that borders on, if not crosses to,
psychological torture.”
Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures
on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.
“I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor
medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he said, adding
that this was frequently done without anesthesia.
“If they complained about pain, they would be given paracetamol,” he said,
using another name for acetaminophen.
“Just being there felt like being complicit in abuse.”
See the model CNN has recreated based on eyewitness accounts showing
inside Sde Teiman
00:41 - Source: CNN
The same whistleblower also said he witnessed an amputation performed on
a man who had sustained injuries caused by the constant zip-tying of his
wrists. The account tallied with details of a letter authored by a doctor
working at Sde Teiman published by Ha’aretz in April.
“From the first days of the medical facility’s operation until today, I have
faced serious ethical dilemmas,” said the letter addressed to Israel’s attorney
general, and its health and defense ministries, according to Ha’aretz. “More
than that, I am writing (this letter) to warn you that the facilities’ operations
do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the
Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law.”
An IDF spokesperson denied the allegations reported by Ha’aretz in a written
statement to CNN at the time, saying that medical procedures were
conducted with “extreme care” and in accordance with Israeli and
international law.
The spokesperson added that the handcuffing of the detainees was done in
“accordance with procedures, their health condition and the level of danger
posed by them,” and that any allegation of violence would be examined.
They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings.
An Israeli whistleblower recalling his experience at Sde Teiman
Whistleblowers also said that medical team were told to refrain from signing
medical documents, corroborating previous reporting by rights group
Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI).
The PHRI report released in April warned of “a serious concern that
anonymity is employed to prevent the possibility of investigations or
complaints regarding breaches of medical ethics and professionalism.”
“You don’t sign anything, and there is no verification of authority,” said the
same whistleblower who said he lacked the appropriate training for the
treatment he was asked to administer. “It is a paradise for interns because it’s
like you do whatever you want.”
CNN also requested comment from the Israeli health ministry on the
allegations in this report. The ministry referred CNN back to the IDF.
Concealed from the outside world
Sde Teiman and other military detention camps have been shrouded in
secrecy since their inception. Israel has repeatedly refused requests to
disclose the number of detainees held at the facilities, or to reveal the
whereabouts of Gazan prisoners.
Last Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court held a hearing in response to a
petition brought forward by Israeli rights group, HaMoked, to reveal the
location of a Palestinian X-Ray technician detained from Nasser Hospital in
southern Gaza in February. It was the first court session of its kind since
October 7.
Israel’s highest court had previously rejected writs of habeas corpus filed on
behalf of dozens of Palestinians from Gaza held in unknown locations.
The disappearances “allows for the atrocities that we’ve been hearing about
to happen,” said Tal Steiner, an Israeli human rights lawyer and executive
director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.
“People completely disconnected from the outside world are the most
vulnerable to torture and mistreatment,” Steiner said in an interview with
CNN.
Since October 7, more than 100 structures, including large tents and
hangars, appeared within these areas of the Sde Teiman desert camp. Planet
Labs PBC
Satellite images provide further insight into activities at Sde Teiman,
revealing that in the months since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on
October 7, more than 100 new structures, including large tents and hangars,
have been built at the desert camp. A comparison of aerial photographs from
September 10, 2023 and March 1 this year also showed a significant increase
in the number of vehicles at the facility, indicating an uptick in activity.
Satellite imagery from two dates in early December showed construction
work in progress.
CNN also geolocated the two leaked photographs showing the enclosure
holding the group of blindfolded men in gray tracksuits. The pattern of
panels seen on the roof matched those of a large hangar visible in satellite
imagery. The structure, which resembles an animal pen, is located in the
central area of the Sde Teiman compound. It is an older structure seen
among new buildings which have appeared since the war began.
CNN reviewed satellite images from two other military detention camps –
Ofer and Anatot bases in the occupied West Bank – and did not detect
expansion in the grounds since October 7. Several rights groups and legal
experts say they believe that Sde Teiman, which is the nearest to Gaza, likely
hosts the largest number of detainees of the three military detention camps.
“I was there for 23 days. Twenty-three days that felt like 100 years,” said 27-
year-old Ibrahim Yassine on the day of his release from a military detention
camp.
He was lying in a crowded room with over a dozen newly freed men – they
were still in the grey tracksuit prison uniforms. Some had deep flesh wounds
from where the handcuffs had been removed.
“We were handcuffed and blindfolded,” said another man, 43-year-old
Sufyan Abu Salah. “Today is the first day I can see.”
Several had a glassy look in their eyes and were seemingly emaciated. One
elderly man breathed through an oxygen machine as he lay on a stretcher.
Outside the hospital, two freed men from the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society embraced their colleagues.
For Dr. Al-Ran, his reunion with his friends was anything but joyful. The
experience, he said, rendered him mute for a month as he battled an
“emotional deadness.”
“It was very painful. When I was released, people expected me to miss them,
to embrace them. But there was a gap,” said al-Ran. “The people who were
with me at the detention facility became my family. Those friendships were
the only things that belonged to us.”
Just before his release, a fellow prisoner had called out to him, his voice
barely rising above a whisper, al-Ran said. He asked the doctor to find his
wife and kids in Gaza. “He asked me to tell them that it is better for them to
be martyrs,” said al-Ran. “It is better for them to die than to be captured and
held here.”
Watch CNN challenge Israeli guards at Sde Teiman
00:53 - Source: CNN
Credits
Executive producer: Barbara Arvanitidis
Senior investigations writer: Tamara Qiblawi
Chief global affairs correspondent: Matthew Chance
OSINT reporter: Allegra Goodwin
Photojournalist: Alex Platt
Reporters: Abeer Salman, Ami Kaufman, Kareem Khadder, Mohammad Al
Sawalhi and Tareq Al Hilou
Visual and graphic editors: Carlotta Dotto, Lou Robinson and Mark Oliver
3D designer: Tom James
Photo editor: Sarah Tilotta
Video editors: Mark Baron, Julie Zink and Augusta Anthony
Motion designers: Patrick Gallagher and Yukari Schrickel
Digital editors: Laura Smith-Spark and Eliza Mackintosh
Executive editors: Dan Wright and Matt Wells
Editor’s note: Tamara Qiblawi wrote and reported from London. Matthew
Chance, Barbara Arvanitidis and Alex Platt reported from Sde Teiman; Ami
Kaufman and Allegra Goodwin reported from London; Abeer Salman and
Kareem Khadder reported from Jerusalem; and journalists Mohammad Al
Sawalhi and
|
|