Palestinians recount deadly abuse in Israeli prisons: ‘It is Guantánamo’

One Palestinian inmate died with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards.

Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated.

A third screamed for help for hours before dying.

The details of the prisoners’ deaths were recounted by eyewitnesses and corroborated by doctors from Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), who sat in on autopsies, the findings of which were shared with families and obtained by The Washington Post. The three men are among at least 13 Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel to die in Israeli jails since Oct. 7, according to PHRI. An unknown number of prisoners from the Gaza Strip have also died.

Rights groups say conditions in Israel’s jam-packed prisons have deteriorated dangerously since the Hamas attacks on Israel. Former Palestinian prisoners described routine beatings, often carried out on entire cells or sections, usually with batons and sometimes with dogs. They said they were denied sufficient food and medical care and were subjected to psychological as well as physical abuse.

The Post spoke to 11 former prisoners and half a dozen lawyers, examined court records and reviewed autopsy reports, revealing rampant, sometimes deadly violence and deprivation by Israeli prison authorities.

While international attention and condemnation has focused on the plight of Gazan detainees - specifically at the notorious Sde Teiman military site - rights advocates say there is a deeper, systemic crisis in Israel’s penal system.

“Violence is pervasive,” said Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli rights group HaMoked, which has worked for years with Palestinian inmates. “It’s very overcrowded. Every prisoner that we’ve met with has lost 30 pounds.”

Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, attributes the abuses, in part, to an atmosphere of revenge in Israel following Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. “It’s a combination of individual sentiments that are very negative and violent, of backing of the policymakers and of lack of accountability,” she said.

Asked about the prisoners who have died behind bars since Oct. 7, as well the other allegations detailed in this story, Israel’s prison service said in a statement: “We are not aware of the claims you described, and as far as we know, no such events have occurred. Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”

“All prisoners are detained according to the law,” the statement continued. “All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards.”

The International Criminal Court is considering arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Conditions in the country’s jails could lead to more international legal action, Israeli intelligence chief Ronen Bar warned in a letter to prison authorities on June 26.

“Israel is having difficulty repelling claims against it, at least some of which are well founded,” he wrote in a letter viewed by The Post and first published by Ynet.

The prison system, built for 14,500 inmates, was housing 21,000, the letter said, not including an estimated 2,500 detainees from Gaza, most held in military facilities.

“The incarceration crisis creates threats to Israel’s national security, its foreign relations and its ability to realize the war goals it set for itself,” Bar concluded.

Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, did not respond to requests for comment on Bar’s letter.

But Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who oversees the prison system, has been unapologetic about his “war” on Palestinian detainees. In a post on X this month responding to Bar, he boasted that he had “dramatically reduced” shower time and introduced a “minimal menu.”

The simplest solution to prison overcrowding, he said, would be capital punishment.

Ben Gvir’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Tora Bora’

For Abdulrahman Bahash, 23, his prison stay became a death sentence.

His family said he was a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - listed as a terrorist group by Israel and the United States - and was arrested in connection with armed clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Israel’s prison service said it could not detail what, if any, charges were brought against Bahash or the other prisoners in the story.

Two of Bahash’s fellow inmates at Megiddo Prison, a facility in northern Israel where at least three prisoners have died since October, linked his killing to a particularly severe beating by guards on their block in December. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Officers raided all cells on the wing and handcuffed the inmates before beating them, according to a 28-year-old prisoner who was detained in the same section. He said similar beatings happened twice a week while he was incarcerated.

Guards went at them “in a crazy way,” the prisoner said. “They used their batons, they kicked us … all over our bodies.”

After the beating, he said, Bahash and other members of his cell were taken to an area of isolation rooms nicknamed “Tora Bora,” after al-Qaeda’s Afghan cave network.

“The noise of the screams was all over the section,” he said. Bahash returned with deep bruises, complaining his ribs might be broken. When he sought medical assistance, his prisonmate said, he was sent back with Acemol, a simple pain killer.

“In the end, he was incapable of standing on his feet,” he said. “We helped him walk around as if he was a child.”

Bahash died about three weeks later, on Jan. 1.

A post-mortem “revealed signs of traumatic injury to the right chest and left abdomen, causing multiple rib fractures and spleen injury, potentially the result of assault,” read a report from Daniel Solomon, a doctor with PHRI who was given permission by prison authorities to sit in on the autopsy.

Septic shock and respiratory failure following the injuries were listed as potential causes of death. The official autopsy results have been withheld from the family, as has Bahash’s body.

Israel’s Prison Service did not respond to questions about why his body has not been returned to his relatives.

Saeb Erekat, his brother-in-law, said the young man was in peak physical shape before prison. He described Megiddo as a “graveyard.”

Bahash’s autopsy was one of five that doctors from PHRI were able to attend on behalf of prisoners’ families after applying for permission from the courts.

Abdul Rahman al-Maari, 33, died in Megiddo on Nov. 13. A carpenter and father of four, Maari had been in prison since February 2023, according to his brother Ibrahim, who said he was arrested at a temporary checkpoint and accused of being affiliated with Hamas and possessing a firearm.

Relatives lost touch with him after Oct. 7, when family visits were shut down. They are still trying to piece together the details of his death.

A report by PHRI doctor Danny Rosin from his autopsy found that “Bruises were seen over the left chest, with broken ribs and chest bone underneath. … External bruises were also seen on the back, buttocks, left arm and thigh, and right side of the head and neck.”

Khairy Hamad, 32, a prisoner in the same section, said Maari was kicked down a flight of about 15 metal stairs while handcuffed - a punishment for speaking back to guards during a room search as inmates were stripped and beaten.

Hamad said he and his cellmates had been ordered to the ground floor and Maari landed about five yards away from him. He was conscious, he said, but bleeding from the head. Maari, too, was moved to isolation in Tora Bora. From the cell next door, 53-year-old lawyer Sariy Khourieh listened to him wail in pain for hours.

“He was screaming all day and night,” Khourieh said. “I need a doctor,” he remembers him shouting, again and again.

At 4 a.m., he finally fell silent.

In the morning, Khourieh listened as the guards discovered the lifeless body and called a doctor. He heard them try to revive Maari with a defibrillator, then saw him taken out in a body bag.

“In a modern society, things like this shouldn’t happen,” his brother said.

Overcrowding and neglect

Reports of medical assistance being denied are pervasive in the testimonies of former prisoners. The death of Muhammed al-Sabbar, 21, on Feb. 28 could have been avoided if his chronic condition had been treated properly, according to Rosin from PHRI, who sat in on his autopsy.

Sabbar’s family said he was arrested for incitement in connection with posts he made online. He had suffered since childhood from Hirschsprung’s disease, a condition that causes severe, painful bowel blockages. He needed a special diet and medication.

Sabbar’s stomach began to swell in October after he was denied his medication, said Atef Awawda, 54, one of his cellmates. A prison doctor had given him a single injection earlier that month, Awawda recalled, but told Sabbar not to tell anyone. “This was the last time we received medicine,” he said.

“Mohammed’s death could have been avoided with stricter adherence to his medical needs,” Rosin’s letter to his family said, describing his colon as dilated and filled with a large amount of fecal matter.

By the time he was rushed to an emergency room, “his condition was already such that the chance of saving him was slim,” the report concluded.

A record 9,700 Palestinian security prisoners were being held in Israeli prisons in May, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner rights organization. Some 3,380 were administrative detainees, the group said, held without charge or trial. The numbers do not include prisoners from Gaza; Israeli authorities will not reveal exactly how many have been detained or where they are held.

Cells made for six sometimes held double that number, former inmates said, with mattresses placed on the floor.

Some said coverings were removed from cell windows in the winter to expose them to the cold. Others said the Israeli national anthem was played incessantly at high volumes; lights were left on at night to disturb their sleep.

One Palestinian prisoner was beaten in front of a judge as he joined a hearing via video link in November, according to his lawyer and court records reviewed by The Post.

“We can hear now in the background cries of people being beaten,” the court minutes read. The shouts stopped when the judge intervened.

“My nose is broken,” said the defendant, whose name was redacted in court records. “I ask that the hearing not end before they promise not to hit me.”

‘Policy of starvation’

Violence and medical negligence were accompanied by the withholding of food, former prisoners recounted. Each said they had lost significant weight in jail, shedding between 30 and 50 pounds.

Journalist Moath Amarneh, 37, imprisoned for six months in Megiddo after filming demonstrations in the West Bank, said his six-person cell held up to 15 people during his stay.

The inmates would share a plate of vegetables and yogurt for breakfast. For lunch, each prisoner received half a cup of rice, and the cell - however many men were in it - would divvy up a plate of sliced tomatoes or cabbage. On good days, there might be sausage or beans. Dinner was an egg and some vegetables, he said.

“It’s barely enough to survive,” said lawyer Aya al-Haj Odeh, who said some clients reported being given as little as three slices of bread a day or a few spoonfuls of rice and having limited access to drinking water.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Supreme Court in April over what it called it a “policy of starvation.” Ben Gvir wrote to the group taking credit for the policy, saying he was working to “worsen the conditions” of security prisoners to “create deterrence,” the ACRI said.

Muazzaz Obayat, 37, could barely walk when he left Ktzi’ot, in southern Israel, last week. He was arrested in the aftermath of Oct. 7 on suspicion of ties to Hamas, but no charges were ever brought against him.

His curly black hair and beard were unkempt; his cheekbones jutted out, and his eyes were sunken.

At a clinic in the West Bank town of Beit Jala where he was receiving medical care, he said he wasn’t sure how old he was or the ages of his five children.

“I know nothing but imprisonment,” he said.

Once an amateur bodybuilder, he said he’d lost more than 100 pounds in nine months.

He whispered as he described a guard sexually assaulting him with a broom. His doctors said he was suffering from post-traumatic stress and malnutrition.

“It is Guantánamo,” he said.