Tel Aviv, September 6 (RHC)-- An Israeli soldier has released a photo showing the mistreatment and humiliation of an elderly Palestinian man while in custody of the occupation forces.

The soldier uploaded the image on his social media account on Thursday amid mounting reports of torture and harassment in the Tel Aviv regime's prisons.  The image shows 60-year-old Mahmoud Asafra, from the southern West Bank town of Beit Kahil, seated with his hands bound and eyes covered among a group of Israeli forces.

The soldiers from the 92nd Battalion are mocking and degrading the kidnapped Palestinian man, making obscene gestures with their hands.

Speaking to Wafa news agency, Asafra's son, Mohammad, said his father, who served as the imam of a mosque, had been detained twice since October 2023, when Israel launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Mohammad said that his father was subjected to severe physical abuse during his first detention, and that he was re-arrested in August after Israeli forces raided and vandalized his home.

The image, which has caused profound distress and pain to family members, exposes the "brutal nature of the occupation," as well as Israeli soldiers’ "sadism, cruelty, and barbarism," he noted.

Some 9,500 Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, are currently in Israeli jails—around one-third without charge or trial. Also, an unknown number are arbitrarily being held in the regime’s detention facilities following a wave of arrests in the wake of the Gaza onslaught.

A Palestinian lawyer says he received reports of severe beatings and systematic starvation in Israel.  Countless testimonies speak of detainees in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds blindfolded and in diapers, deprived of adequate healthcare, food, water and sleep. The victims also recount electrocutions, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual abuse.

“Torture practices are irredeemably unlawful and constitute international crimes, yet form part of the modus operandi of Israel’s notorious detention and torture system,”  a group of UN experts warned last month.  “These practices are intended to punish Palestinians for resisting occupation and seek to destroy them individually and collectively.”

Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.