Palestinian medical doctors ‘tortured into confessions’ in harrowing claims of abuse in opposition to Israel’s troopers | EUROtoday

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Palestinian medical doctors working in Gaza have accused Israeli forces of utilizing electrical shocks, turning medics into human shields and repeatedly torturing them after arresting them with out cost.

Dr Khaled Al-Serr, a surgeon at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, stated the Israeli navy raided the ability on two totally different events, arresting dozens of medical staff as they handled injured Palestinians.

He alleged that when he was detained in March final yr, he was stripped bare alongside 4 others and compelled to behave as a human protect earlier than being taken to Sde Teiman navy detention centre in southern Israel.

There, he stated he was coerced into making confessions whereas handcuffed for 3 months even whereas asleep, crushed so badly his ribs broke, and interrogated concerning the hospital.

His account comes because the UN stated on Monday that Israel killed 15 extra medical and emergency staff as they tried to rescue the injured from the southern metropolis of Rafah.

More than 250 Palestinian medics – together with medical doctors, nurses and paramedics – are believed to have been held in Israel for the reason that warfare in Gaza erupted in October 2023, based on human rights’ group Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), who declare 180 are nonetheless behind bars “without due process or clarity”.

In October, an UN unbiased fee concluded that Israel has perpetrated “a concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, with “relentless and deliberate attacks” on medical personnel and amenities amounting to warfare crimes and the crime in opposition to humanity of extermination.

The Israeli navy has repeatedly denied accusations of abusing and concentrating on medics and accused Hamas militants of utilizing hospitals in Gaza as bases, regardless of offering scant proof of such a severe cost.

But Palestinian healthcare staff described violent raids and bombings of hospitals, mass arrests and disappearances of personnel, torture and deaths in detention.

Details of the alleged abuse come as The Independent launched its personal investigation, revealing proof of abuse, torture, and deaths of Palestinian detainees, together with a few of Gaza’s most famed medics, in Israel’s jails.

Recalling his alleged therapy one night time, Dr Al-Serr instructed The Independent: “I was tied everywhere, from my ankles to my wrists. I wasn’t able to move, I was not able to breathe properly.

“There were soldiers sitting over me, putting their shoes over me. One kept kicking me and punching with the back of his gun or his foot… Every two minutes, I either get beaten by a fist or a kick, or hit in the back with the butt of their guns. I describe it as the way to hell.”

He stated injured inmates would come to him for assist – together with 4 males who instructed him that they had been raped by Israeli jail guards with sharp objects, inflicting rectal bleeding.

One man, 24 years previous, was so disturbed by the torture – he instructed Dr Al-Serr it included rape and being instructed Israel had bombed his household in Gaza as a result of he wouldn’t confess – that he had a breakdown and would uncontrollably defecate and urinate on himself when the guards arrived. It acquired so unhealthy that Dr Al-Serr insisted the guards give him a nappy to put on.

Dr Iyas al-Bursh, a GP who labored at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, stated he was additionally arrested whereas working final March. He described spending 4 months in Sde Teiman after which seven in Ofer jail within the occupied West Bank.

“It was a harsh and difficult life and experience interspersed with torment and torture in all forms, whether it was physical torture from beating, punching, and electric shocks to psychological torture and medical neglect,” he stated, including that he misplaced a number of members of the family in Israel’s bombings.

“We were denied our human rights and were prevented from communicating with our families or any legal authority.”

The Israeli navy has investigated a minimum of one occasion of guards in Sde Teiman allegedly torturing an inmate – in an indictment seen by The Independent5 guards are accused of aggravated assault, together with “stabbing” an inmate with a pointy object, which resulted in an inner rectal tear.

They, nevertheless, stated this was an “exceptional” incident and denied sick therapy of medics.

“Regarding the detention of medical staff – some suspects were detained during operations in medical facilities, which have been used by Hamas and other terrorist organisations for military purposes,” the navy stated in an announcement to The Independent.

“Among the detainees were also medical staff or individuals who impersonated such staff, who were found to be involved in terrorist activities, and some were even revealed to be members of the military wing of Hamas while simultaneously working at the medical institution. The IDF operates in accordance with international law, and does not detain medical workers due to their work as such.”

Speaking to The IndependentYasmine al-Bursh, spouse of Dr Adnan al-Bursh, a famend Palestinian surgeon, described how she pieced collectively what occurred to him after he died in Ofer jail final April, 4 months after being detained.

She stated former cellmates described how he had misplaced almost half his physique weight and had been subjected to excessive violence and torture.

Dr Guy Shalev, an Israeli physician and PHRI’s director, stated Palestinian medics had been being focused by Israel, regardless of their distinctive safety below conventions and worldwide regulation, at a time when the destruction of healthcare system infrastructure is inflicting much more influence.

“We know that when the only paediatric orthopaedist in the near region of Gaza is being held in an Israeli incarceration facility, that person is not there doing the important work,” he stated.

“If you attack a healthcare system, you don’t only attack the few hundred people that you attack, or the few hundred people that you detain. You damage an entire population.”

He warned that the violation of worldwide conventions and the safety of healthcare in Gaza, is one thing “we as humanity are going to pay for in future conflicts”.

“These violations are so out in the open, so clear, and we see no accountability; there is no effective international pressure on Israel to abide by these conventions, that it basically means that these conventions have no meaning or are not applicable in practice.

“This is very worrying in terms of what the future of care – the idea, the ability to care for another person – looks like.”

Israel launched a devastating invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas militants’ bloody assaults on southern Israel on 7 October, throughout which they killed over 1,200 folks and took greater than 250 hostages.

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment, based on Palestinian well being officers – amongst them are greater than 1,057 Palestinian well being and medical professionals, based on the United Nations.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, warned in January that the UN had documented a minimum of 136 strikes on a minimum of 27 hospitals and 12 different medical amenities in Gaza, including that the “protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times”.

At the second, solely 15 of the 24 hospitals are functioning, with so many medics behind bars that a number of departments aren’t capable of perform.