‘Torture isn’t new to Palestinians’: How Israel learned from colonialism

Warning: This story includes descriptions of sexual assault that some readers will find disturbing.

A companion essay to Al Jazeera’s Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon , directed and executive produced by Awad Joumaa.

He was in the next room. The walls were thin. The door between the rooms was open. He could hear everything.

In 1969, Abdel Latif Ghaith, who would later become director of the Palestinian prisoner-rights organisation Addameer, was being held in a Jerusalem detention block when, in a contiguous cell, other Israeli interrogators were trying to break another young Palestinian. Her name was Rasmea Odeh.

“I saw Rasmea in the interrogation room,” Ghaith recounts. “And she was naked.”

His voice was slow and exact, as he relived a memory he has carried for more than half a century.

Rasmea’s father was brought to the room, Ghaith said. Seeing his daughter in that condition, the father toppled her: “If you have something or don’t have something, say anything so they can get out of this situation.” The father cried. Rasmea said: “I don’t have anything, I didn’t do anything.”

The father left, but Rasmea’s ordeal did not end. “And I saw her during the interrogations once again, where she was severely tortured,” Ghaith recalled.