Thousands of Palestinians were “systematically” mistreated and tortured in Israeli prisons after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights non-governmental organization, alleged yesterday.

Testimonies of 55 ex-prisoners revealed that “inhumane conditions” are applied, an NGO report highlights: more than ten detention centers have been turned into “de facto torture camps”, the text says.

These testimonies “clearly show that a systematic, institutional policy is being implemented focused on the ill-treatment and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israel”, underlined B’Tselem (“In the Image”, God’s blessing), an organization founded in 1989, after the first Intifada.

Former detainees reported “frequent, extremely brutal and arbitrary violence, sexual assaults, humiliation and humiliation, deliberate deprivation of food, forced sanitary conditions and sleep deprivation,” the NGO added.

Asked about this by AFP, Israel’s prison directorate countered that “all prisoners are detained legally” and “their fundamental rights are fully respected” by “competent and professional” officials and heads of detention centers.

The allegations made in the report are “baseless”, the prison directorate assured.

For its part, the Israeli army said that “any act of ill-treatment of prisoners, whether during their arrest or during their interrogation, is illegal, against the regulations and strictly prohibited.”

“The Israeli army categorically rejects the allegations of systematic ill-treatment in its detention centers,” the armed forces added in a written statement obtained by AFP.

The release of B’Tselem’s findings comes a week after a United Nations report found that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to treatment that amounted to torture.

In July, the Israeli military announced that nine of its members had been arrested over the alleged mistreatment of a Palestinian detainee at a detention center for people arrested in the Gaza Strip.

Independent UN experts have warned against Israel’s “escalating use of torture” against Palestinian prisoners since the war in the Gaza Strip began, denouncing “total impunity” and calling for crimes against humanity to be prevented.

B’Tselem pointed out that Israeli authorities declared a “state of emergency in prisons” on October 18, eleven days after Hamas’ unprecedented raid on southern Israel, triggering the war in the Gaza Strip.

“Relentless physical and psychological violence, deprivation of medical care, deprivation of food, deprivation of water, deprivation of sleep and confiscation of all personal belongings are now applied in all prisons,” according to the text.