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A Palestinian journalist has testified that Israeli forces subjected him to rape, sexual torture, and severe abuse at the Sde Teiman detention center, leaving him with lasting psychological trauma, according to the Palestinian Center for Journalists’ Protection. After being abducted on 18 March 2024 during an Israeli raid on Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, while wearing his press vest, he spent 20 months in detention, including three at Sde Teiman and one at Ofer, and suffered a mental collapse for more than two months.
He reported group sexual assaults, physical and psychological torture, electric shocks, starvation, religious insults, sleep deprivation, and harsh interrogations, alongside inhuman detention conditions marked by overcrowding, poor hygiene, lack of food and water, and witnessing unexplained deaths in custody. Medical and legal experts confirmed symptoms of acute stress disorder and PTSD.
The center said the abuses amount to rape and sexual torture under international law and may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity if systematic. It urged referral of the case to the International Criminal Court, noting growing evidence of systematic torture of Palestinian journalists in Israeli prisons.