Ramallah, July 30 (RHC)-- A Palestinian prisoner has reportedly been subjected to rape by Israeli guards at a notorious facility set up to hold Palestinians after the launch of the regime’s ongoing genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), a watchdog, and several Israeli media outlets reported the development on Monday. "This is a new rape crime committed against a detainee at the Sde Teiman camp (in the Negev Desert) by a group of prison guards," Abdullah Al-Zaghari, head of the PPC, told AFP.
The victim has suffered serious injury as a result of the abuse and is unable to walk, Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and public broadcaster KAN reported.
Israeli facilities hold an estimated 9,700 Palestinian prisoners. Inmates have consistently reported being subjected to torture and sexual abuse.
The regime, however, has significantly ramped up its detention spree in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since October 7, when it brought the coastal sliver under the war.
Ever since, human rights statements and prisoner accounts have been rife with reports of intensified acts of torture by the regime’s forces, including food and water deprivation, intimidation, electrical shocks, mock executions, and violent sexual abuse.
An inquiry conducted by the Israeli military says two detainees, who were abducted from Gaza and transferred to Sde Teiman, were subjected to physical assault and subsequently succumbed to their injuries.
Subsequent to the Monday reports, the Israeli military police allegedly raided the Sde Teiman center as part of an investigation into the case, rounding up 10 troops stationed at the facility.
The police forces were met with resistance on the part of the troops, who barricaded themselves in and used pepper spray to avoid arrest.
An eyewitness says Israeli military soldiers are raping Palestinian women before killing them al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after they raided the medical complex last week.
The regime’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, however, described the suspects as "heroic warriors." Itamar Ben-Gvir, a similarly hard-right official, who oversees the prisons where Palestinians are detained, also called the Israeli troops the “best heroes” and described the arrests as “shameful.”
