A 25-year-old German rights activist has alleged that she was unlawfully strip-searched three times and raped while detained in an Israeli prison. She had joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, a convoy of relief ships heading for Gaza with humanitarian aid from Europe last autumn. Israeli forces intercepted the boat in international waters and detained her for five days.
A formal criminal complaint over the matter has been filed with the Israeli authorities. She told the British newspaper The Guardian that the main aim of the alleged violence in the Israeli prison was to intimidate activists who show solidarity with Palestine.
“They want to break and silence our will,” she said. “They want to make the situation so traumatic that we never speak about Palestine again.” Undeterred, she has begun a legal fight against the alleged abuse.
The written complaint has been sent to Israel’s attorney general, the prison service’s legal adviser and the prison guards’ investigation department. Her lawyer, Muna Haddad, said the complaint was a major challenge to what she called a culture of abuse of detainees in Israel.
Haddad said Palestinian detainees had been subjected to systematic sexual violence over the past three years, and that Israel was now extending such treatment to foreign nationals who stand with Palestinians.
According to her account, after being transferred to Givon prison on 10 October she was forced to undress and was raped by female guards when she refused, while male guards could be heard from behind a partition; she believes the episode was recorded on prison cameras.
The case has drawn strong international reaction. In May, the UN blacklisted Israel over conflict-related sexual violence.
Australian police and French prosecutors have also opened investigations into abuse and alleged war crimes against their nationals in Israeli prisons. On 12 October, the activist and others were sent back to Jordan. After returning to Germany, she made the matter public at a conference on political prisoners in December; following her, more than 10 flotilla activists have alleged sexual abuse.
The Israeli military and the prison service (IPS), however, have completely denied the allegations. A prison-service spokesperson claimed the allegations were baseless and that no rape or systematic abuse by their staff had taken place.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report