'Interrogators tried to drown me with toilet water' - Palestinian prisoner

A Palestinian prisoner who was tortured at Ofer Prison in the Occupied West Bank said interrogators tried to drown him with toilet water, Anadolu Agency reports.

The Palestine Prisoners’ Board and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association, both affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), released a joint report on the torture of a Palestinian prisoner identified only by his initials, GV, at Ofer Prison in Ramallah.

According to the report, Palestinian prisoner, GV, said: “During the interrogation, the interrogators tried to drown me with toilet water. To this day, we are subjected to torture, humiliation and beatings.”

The prisoner added that he was detained by Israeli soldiers in the Hamad neighbourhood of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 2 March. His clothes were taken off, his hands cuffed behind his back, he was blindfolded and he was put in a truck and beaten.

For a hundred days, we were beaten just for making any movement and we were handcuffed and blindfolded for the entire time

the prisoner added.

OPINION: A drop in the ocean: Abuse at Israeli prison reflects rampant torture of Palestinian detainees

The prisoner who narrated all these incidents is still being held at Ofer Prison, where prisoners are subjected to torture, humiliation, harassment and beatings.

Surgery without anaesthesia, amputation of prisoners’ limbs as a result of constant restraints, rape and sexual assaults at various levels, starvation and other systematic crimes continue to be committed

it added.

The report emphasized that Israel has held thousands of Palestinians captive from the Gaza Strip and their fates are still unknown.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip following a Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023. The conflict has resulted in over 40,170 Palestinian deaths, mostly women and children, and more than 92,740 injuries, according to local health authorities.

The ongoing blockade of Gaza has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, leaving much of the region in ruins.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on 6 May.

READ: 5 Israeli soldiers accused of sexually abusing Gaza detainee released into house arrest