Israeli forces have carried out widespread abuse of Palestinians held in Israel’s prisons, according to an investigation by the Qatar-based outlet Al Jazeera. Muhammad al-Bakri is one of those who say they suffered such abuse. He cannot forget the day he says he was raped: 10 April 2024, during the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan. Al-Bakri said he had been arrested by Israeli soldiers a month earlier; from then on, the Gaza government official was beaten, tortured and kept bound hand and foot.
Al-Bakri said he was held with seven other detainees, all of them stripped, blindfolded and handcuffed. “After our clothes were removed, we were raped. We were crying out to Allah, but they only laughed and filmed us,” he said. The Gaza official said Israeli guards also used dogs during the sexual abuse of detainees: “The dogs attacked us on the officers’ orders.” According to the report, al-Bakri is among those who recounted their experiences in detention in detail for Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary “Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon,” which examines alleged rape and sexual abuse of Palestinians by the Israeli military.
The report says that, according to observations by judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), various UN inquiries and the assessment of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, serious allegations have emerged that sexual violence and abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces has taken on a widespread and systematic character. Rights organisations including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor have documented detainee testimony alleging that Israeli soldiers used dogs in carrying out sexual violence including rape. Allegations of sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons are not new — they go back decades — but the report says that after the October 2023 attack by Hamas and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, the use of rape as a weapon of war increased. A UN report published in March 2025 said evidence had been found of Israel’s “systematic” use of sexual violence, reproductive violence and other gender-based violence since 7 October 2023.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report