Israel’s defense forces have reportedly found thousands of disturbing video hours documenting Hamas officials subjecting Palestinian civilians to brutal treatment, according to The Daily Mail.
The footage reveals scenes of male detainees with bags over their heads, restrained in painful positions by chains affixed to floors and ceilings. Some prisoners are shown writhing in agony as they endure beatings to the soles of their feet. In one particularly distressing video, a hooded man appears to scream and protest against his captor. These traumatic scenes were inadvertently recorded by surveillance cameras within a Hamas base in northern Gaza, a facility Israeli forces raided earlier this year.
Reports suggest this footage was found on computers seized from a vacated building inside the Jabalia refugee camp, although the reasons for detaining these men remain unclear.
The detainees include political opponents and individuals suspected of collaborating with Israel. The time stamps on the footage indicate that these acts of torture occurred between 2018 and 2020. Guards often seem disturbingly nonchalant, conversing casually as the violence unfolds. In one video, an interrogator relaxes in a chair, arms folded behind his head, as a bound prisoner hangs from the ceiling by his arms. Another clip shows a man with a red bag over his head, chained in such a restricted position that he can barely place one foot on the floor, later choked severely by his captor.
An Israeli military official informed The Mail, “The IDF found these CCTV images in March. It took months to go through them all.” Although independent verification of the footage has not been possible, longstanding human rights reports have documented abuses by Hamas against Gaza civilians. Amnesty International previously published an in-depth report detailing Hamas’s record of abductions, torture, and killings targeting its own population during the previous Israel-Hamas war.
According to Hamza Howidy, 27, an accountant who later escaped from Gaza, “People outside of Gaza call Hamas freedom fighters when they are killing innocent Palestinians for nothing.”
One man, Abdul, previously shared with Israeli media how he endured repeated torture until he managed to flee to Egypt. Reflecting on his experience, he told i24News, “They put me in a tiny room. They wouldn’t let me sleep or go to the bathroom inside. There was no food… They would torture me so badly. Sometimes, they would tie my feet up and beat them with a stick. After that, every few years, they would arrest me and torture me in the same way…”
Mr. Howidy, who thinks he was held in western Jabalia in 2019, is unsure if he appears in the discovered footage. He explained that “Hamas controls everything.”
Mr. Howidy described others who suffered prolonged abuse, including one man detained for three years and tortured thrice weekly, enduring severe physical violations and electric shocks until his eventual release upon proving his innocence. “The first thing he did was shoot dead the Hamas officer who reported him – his uncle,” Mr. Howidy said. Without legal representation, detainees’ families remain unaware of their fates. After leaving Gaza for Europe via the Egyptian border last year, Mr. Howidy shared that he was warned not to return to Gaza.
{Matzav.com}