Israeli jails ‘harsher’ than US-run Guantanamo prison

Sheikh Talal Abdulrahman, who has served 18 years in Israeli prisons made the statement in an exclusive interview with the latest episode of Press TV’s Hidden Files program.

Abdulrahman underlined the Israeli regime’s escalating crackdown on Palestinians since the October 7 retaliatory attack on the occupied territories, saying the number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails exceeds 12,000 people, which means 7,000 more Palestinians have been detained since then while the figure previously stood at 5,000 detainees, including women and children.

Detailing the woes and hardships the Palestinian prisoners suffer in the occupying regime’s jails, Abdulrahman termed the liberation of Palestine as precious and said the price Palestinians pay for it is high.

“The Palestinian detainee suffers two pains, the first pain when his house is raided by the occupation army. The troops detonate the doors using bombs and then enter the home and begin ransacking it and destroying everything inside. They terrify the children, women, fathers and mothers in plain sight of the prisoner who is handcuffed behind his back. Any person in that house who wants to protest or speak is hit in the plain sight of the family,” the former prisoner said.

“The Israeli army ransacks the house and takes everything inside. If the troops find money, they steal it. They also steal the jewelry of the women and they take any electronic devices such as computers and phones; they confiscate everything,” he added.

Abdulrahman went on to say that the second suffering that the prisoner would endure begins when he is placed in the occupation troops’ vehicle and taken for interrogation.

“On the way to the interrogation, the detainee is physically and verbally assaulted and hears blasphemous words; all of that is part of the psychological torture,” he added.

Abdulrahman stressed that the Israeli regime uses “systematic torture,” including electrocution, denial of food and medicare as well as sexual abuse as a “weapon of war” against Palestinians.

Abdulrahman underlined that what happens in Israeli jails is “harsher” than what is happening in the US prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay as they learned from the same source how to torture and humiliate people.

Abdulrahman said at the times of war with Palestinians, the Israeli regime pretends to adhere to international law in dealing with detainees in order to portray itself as a “democratic” entity but “all the masks are falling” in the ongoing aggression on Gaza.