‘They were laughing’: Israel’s use of rape and sexual abuse in prisons
Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing. Muhammad al-Bakri specifically remembers the date of his rape. It was April 10, 2024, during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The Gaza civil serva
Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing.
Muhammad al-Bakri specifically remembers the date of his rape.
It was April 10, 2024, during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The Gaza civil servant had been beaten, tortured, bound and forced to soil himself since his arrest by Israeli soldiers a month earlier.
The soldiers and their guard dogs surrounded him that day. “There were six soldiers on the right and six on the left,” he recalled. “They would ask your name. If you said ‘Muhammad’, they would say, ‘No, say your name is b****.’”
Al-Bakri said he was held with seven other prisoners. They were all stripped, blindfolded and handcuffed.
“We were raped after being stripped of our clothes,” he said. “We were shouting, ‘Oh Lord, oh God’, but they were just laughing and filming us.” Al-Bakri then echoed what several rights agencies have also reported – that guards also used dogs during the sexual abuse of prisoners. “The dogs were following commands from the officers to [attack] us,” he said.
“There was no mercy. We stayed in that state of sexual abuse and beatings for about 20 minutes to half an hour. Then they told us to get dressed and took us back to the prison.”
Al-Bakri is among multiple former prisoners who have given detailed testimonies to Al Jazeera, during the production of Al Jazeera’s exclusive original documentary, Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon. They described what International Criminal Court (ICC) judges, the United Nations itself and its special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, say amounts to the widespread and systematic use of rape and sexual torture by the Israeli army against Palestinians. Separately, rights groups such as the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor have documented testimonies of prisoners who recounted how Israeli soldiers used dogs to rape them.
