AOHR (UK) condemns systematic rape and sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli Prisons
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The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) issued a statement on Thursday condemning the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian prisoners. It said the brutality of the crimes have reached unprecedented levels. The statement comes in the wake of a stream of documented testimonies revealing systematic rape and sexual torture in Israeli prisons and detention centres, all in flagrant violation of all international norms and conventions, and constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The AOHR UK statement affirmed that “the victims’ testimonies provide irrefutable evidence that these atrocities are not single incidents but part of a deliberate, institutional policy implemented under orders from senior officials within Israel’s security and military establishment.” It added that the aim of the policy was the physical and psychological destruction of Palestinian detainees.
AOHR UK stressed that the testimonies from released prisoners, women, children, and men, contained harrowing accounts of rape inside interrogation facilities, the use of objects and solid instruments in assaults, and the involvement of trained police dogs in acts of sexual violence. Victims also described being filmed during assaults for the purposes of humiliation and blackmail.
One released female prisoner recounted being raped repeatedly, filmed, and threatened with the release of the footage; another detainee described being raped by a police dog inside Sde Teiman detention centre, while another was assaulted with a wooden stick and later forced to lick it. Others also spoke of being raped with bottles or subjected to group assaults, some of which resulted in the victims’ deaths.
AOHR UK highlighted the disturbing absence of moral outrage within Israeli society regarding these atrocities. The leaked footage from Sde Teiman showing soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee exposed the depth of moral decay within Israel’s institutions. Public discussion focused not on the horror of the crime but on how the footage had been leaked. Instead of condemning and prosecuting the perpetrators, Israeli authorities pursued the whistleblower, while the soldiers involved received sympathy and support from broad sectors of Israeli society, which reflects a serious moral and societal complicity in war crimes.
The AOHR UK warned that continued international silence over rape and sexual torture, now coupled with the legalisation of executions, entrenches Israel’s bloody course and normalises such crimes under a regime of total impunity.
It called for the establishment of a specialised committee including doctors and social workers to support victims and encourage all survivors of torture, especially sexual violence, to testify despite the threats they have received from the occupation. AOHR UK also urged the formation of an independent international commission of inquiry into rape and sexual violence in Israeli prisons, with all evidence submitted to the International Criminal Court as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The AOHR UK called on states party to the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture to uphold their legal obligations by pursuing the perpetrators wherever they may be and by taking decisive action to save more than 9,000 prisoners enduring horrifying forms of torture daily.
It also called on international media institutions, many of which habitually echo Israeli propaganda, to demonstrate basic standards of professionalism and humanity by treating victims’ testimonies as human, not political, accounts, and by giving them due prominence in global discourse.
READ: Autistic Palestinian boy allegedly sexually assaulted in Israeli prison
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