by Bahaa Melhem
After hearing and reading much about the horrors taking place inside Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center, Palestinian journalist Shadi Abu Sidou says nothing could have prepared him for what he witnessed one night in April 2024, when Israeli soldiers “set police dogs on Palestinian detainees to rape them while laughing and filming.”
Abu Sidou, who was held in the military facility located in a base in the Negev Desert, was released as part of a prisoner swap deal in October 2025.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said he was arrested in March 2024 while documenting events at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
“It was brutal,” he recalled, struggling to speak. “When I was arrested, the soldiers ordered me to take off all my clothes. They tied my hands behind my back and beat me until they broke one of my ribs.” He said he was left naked in the rain and cold for more than 10 hours.
But Abu Sidou was not alone in facing what he described as “torture in a cemetery for the living.”
Testimonies given to Asharq Al-Awsat by two other former detainees revealed harrowing abuse inside Sde Teiman, including beatings, electric shocks, sleep and food deprivation, denial of medical care, and what they described as “brutal sexual assaults.”
Systematic Torture
Sde Teiman came under renewed scrutiny after the arrest of former Israeli Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, accused of leaking a video showing Israeli soldiers physically and sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner inside the facility.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the leak might have caused “the worst damage to Israel’s public image since its founding.”
As Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, it detained hundreds of Palestinians under what it calls the “Unlawful Combatants Law,” holding them incommunicado in the secretive desert prison, stripping them of all legal rights and denying access to lawyers and human rights groups.
Israeli and international rights organizations, including B’Tselem, have documented similar complaints of “systematic torture” and “inhuman treatment” inside Sde Teiman.
‘The Disco’: Torture to the Sound of Screams
After long hours of exposure to the cold, Abu Sidou said he was transported in a military truck to Sde Teiman, where a new ordeal began. “They call it the ‘reception’—a corridor lined with about 30 soldiers who beat the prisoners as they enter,” he said. “Some lost their teeth or eyes from the beating.”
After nearly 70 days in detention without charge, Abu Sidou was taken for interrogation. Before entering the room, he was stripped naked and subjected to a full body search, then taken to a place the soldiers called “the disco.”
Inside, he said, were loudspeakers blaring music and screams. “In the ‘disco room,’ prisoners are thrown in for hours without sleep. All you hear is noise, loud music, and the screams of others being tortured.”
He said he was later taken to another room where guards hung him by his wrists from the ceiling and punched his bare body until he passed out.
Back to the Barracks: Nights of Humiliation
After interrogation, Abu Sidou was returned to the overcrowded metal barracks, which he described as unfit for human life. “We were around 140 to 160 prisoners in each barrack, hands tied and eyes covered,” he said.
“Squads of 30 to 40 soldiers would storm in with dogs, ordering us to lie on our stomachs. The dogs walked on our backs, urinated on us, scratched and bit us.”
One April night, he said, the situation descended into “complete human collapse.” When one prisoner had a nervous breakdown and shouted, “I want to see my children,” the guards unleashed the dogs and “took him out, stripped him, and let the dog do the unspeakable.”
“We could see through our blindfolds, the soldiers laughing and filming with their phones as the prisoner screamed,” Abu Sidou said. “We all started shouting. We thought we were next.”
At the end of his testimony, Abu Sidou described Sde Teiman as “a graveyard for the living.” “We were losing our minds from fear. We couldn’t tell day from night, and the only faces we saw were those hitting and humiliating us,” he said. “I wished for death, just to escape the pain.”
He added that prisoners lived in total isolation from the world, allowed only two minutes to use the toilet in 24 hours, while medical care was used “as another form of humiliation.”
Abu Foul: Detained on One Leg, Released Without Sight
Another chilling account came from Mahmoud Abu Foul, a young man from northern Gaza who was arrested at Kamal Adwan Hospital while receiving treatment after his leg had been amputated. His time in Israeli detention, he said, ended with the total loss of his eyesight.
In late December 2023, Israeli forces stormed the hospital. “They tied my hands and covered my eyes, then beat me mercilessly until I bled,” Abu Foul told Asharq Al-Awsat. “I was already wounded and missing a leg. I could only walk with a crutch, but they took it away and cuffed my hands behind my back.”
After hours of beating and insults, he was transferred to Sde Teiman, where he spent months. “For the first seven days, my hands were tied behind me and my eyes were covered all the time,” he said. “There were about 140 prisoners in each barrack, the food was scarce, and the beatings and humiliation never stopped.”
One day, soldiers struck him repeatedly on the head for nearly two hours. “When I woke up, I realized I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “I told the others I couldn’t see, that everything was dark. I started crying in panic, and since then I haven’t been able to open my eyes.”
Abu Foul said he pleaded for medical help, but his calls went unanswered. “I begged for medicine, but they yelled at me and mocked me. I was left alone to suffer in darkness.” After losing his sight, he said, “I lived the rest of my imprisonment through sound—the screams of other prisoners, the cries for help, and the soldiers’ insults.”
Freedom Tainted by Loss
Months later, Abu Foul’s name appeared on the list of prisoners released in the latest swap deal. He recalled the moment of his freedom: “I returned to Gaza blind, thinking my family was gone,” he said.
“Then, among the crowd, I heard my mother’s voice and realized my family was around me. I thank God I am still with them. I just wish I could have seen my mother’s face, even once.”
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, more than 10,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including over 1,800 detainees from Gaza classified by Israel as “unlawful combatants.”
Palestinian officials say that more than 80 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023, more than half of them from Gaza.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Club told Asharq Al-Awsat that Israel “has carried out a continuous series of fully documented crimes against male and female prisoners over the past two years.”
He added that Israeli authorities “committed another form of genocide inside detention centers through systematic torture and sexual assaults, particularly against detainees from Gaza in Sde Teiman, where even police dogs were used as instruments of rape.”
Palestinian and Israeli rights groups say prisoners held in Israeli jails and camps, particularly in Sde Teiman, face systematic torture, starvation, and medical neglect, which have led to the deaths of several detainees.
No official figures exist on how many prisoners have been held or remain inside the facility.
