Israeli soldiers charged with horror jail act

Disturbing footage shows the incident that led to the charging of five Israeli prison guards with horrific crimes.

Five Israeli soldiers have been charged over the alleged assault and torture of a Palestinian prisoner in Israel’s Sde Temain jail.

In August 2024, an Israeli TV station aired security camera footage from within the jail that depicted the interior of a large shed.

Inside the shed, three rows of handcuffed and blindfolded detainees are lying facedown, and a number of armed Israeli guards – all reservists from the Israeli “Force 100” counter terrorism unit – keep close watch.

Israeli guards direct a prisoner towards the corner of a holding area.

Two guards approach one prisoner, hoist him onto his feet, and direct him towards a corner of the building while a number of other guards carrying riot shields begin to gather.

The guards carrying shields then form a makeshift wall designed to block the view of cameras dotted around the building.

Israeli guards hide the alleged abuse of a Palestinian prisoner by holding up riot shields to block the view of a camera

According to the indictment submitted to an Israeli Military court on Wednesday, the five soldiers “severely beat and assaulted the prisoner, leaving him with severe injuries, including broken ribs and an internal tear in his rectum”.

“For 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head,” the indictment said.

The indictment also claims that one of the soldiers “stabbed the detainee in his buttock with a sharp object” which caused an internal tear in his rectal wall.

A plume of smoke follows an Israeli air strike in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The detainee was eventually hospitalised, and required surgery to his large intestine.

Since the terrifying attacks launched on Israel by Hamas on October 7 2023, Gazans have suffered extensively at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), particularly while detained.

In an interview with the ABC in April last year, a Palestinian man named Mustafa Jamal Kahlout claimed that while he was detained for questioning over a 26-day period, he witnessed numerous instances of abuse.

Rida Obeid, an 18-year-old Palestinian suffering from scabies, shows the affected parts of his body at his home in the village of al-Issawiya, a suburb of East Jerusalem, on January 31, 2025, a day after his release from an Israeli prison as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange deal. Photo: Hazem Bader/ AFP

Mr Kahlout was initially detained for questioning by the IDF because he was lingering in an area that civilians had been told to evacuate.

“They asked me why I did not travel to the south. I told them my mother is old and my father died, she cannot walk. They would reply that it is not enough,” he said.

While detained, Mr Kahlout claims he and fellow prisoners suffered unspeakable abuse.

“There are things I feel ashamed to talk about such as they would stick something into men’s [anus] … it was humiliating, they wanted to break our morale, they did everything they wanted without hesitation,” he said.

“They gave us salted water. We were begging for fresh water.”

Many accounts of atrocities committed by the IDF have been corroborated by doctors working within the Israeli prisons themselves.

Freed Palestinian prisoners are reunited with loved ones after being released from Israeli prion on November 30, 2023 in Ramallah, West Bank. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

One doctor who had visited the prison spoke to the ABC on the condition of anonymity.

“What I witnessed when I visited Sde Teiman I think were obvious infractions of human rights and a system that perpetrates harm to these patients by limiting their access to proper medical care,” he said.

“It is my belief that keeping patients restrained, keeping them naked and exposed to the outside environment … I see that as a form of torture.”

A petition was filed to the Israeli High Court of Justice demanding the decommissioning of Sde Temain, but the motion ultimately went nowhere.

In a statement, the IDF claimed last year’s incident involving the prison guards was an “exceptional incident,” and that it remains “committed to the rule of law.”

Two months prior to the incident at Sde Temain, and in relation to separate allegations of prisoner abuse, the IDF said that it “acts in accordance with Israeli and international law” and that claims of abuse were “unsubstantiated”.