The number of Palestinian detainees killed since October 7 as a result of torture and medical negligence has risen to 13, according to a joint statement by the Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Palestinian citizen of Israel, Juma Abu Ghanima, was killed in an Israeli prison, five days after Israeli authorities announced that he had been transferred, in serious health condition, from his cell in Eshel prison to a medical facility, the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission said on Saturday.
Abu Ghanima, 26, was detained in December by Israeli occupation forces, “on the precedent of his resistance to the occupation,” the Commission further stated.
The number of Palestinian detainees killed since October 7 as a result of torture and medical negligence has risen to 13, according to a joint statement by the Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Abu Ghanima, a Palestinian resident of the Naqab, in Palestine 48, was arrested last December while trying to return to Israel.
According to Israeli media, Abu Ghanima, who crossed into Gaza in 2016, began military training with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas, including advanced training with the Nukhba forces.
“During his time in Gaza, Abu Ghanima carried out various surveillance operations along the border and met with Hamas officials,” according to The Times of Israel.
Abu Ghanima, however, had been reportedly detained by Hamas in Gaza in 2021 for adhering to security restrictions and tried to return to Israel after the prison was bombed by Israeli forces last December.
Israeli media have revealed the death of several detainees from Gaza. However, Israeli authorities refuse to disclose their identities, according to the Commission and PPS.
In a statement, the two prisoner groups held the Israeli prison administration fully responsible for the death of Abu Ghanima, for continuing “to carry out “torture and systematic medical negligence against Palestinian detainees held in Israeli jails”.
The total number of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli jails surged to 9,100, including 3,558 administrative detainees, according to the statement.
Men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war are returning to Gaza with harrowing accounts of mock executions, constant beatings and humiliating mistreatment
Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza have told Middle East Eye how they were physically tortured with dogs and electricity, subjected to mock executions, and held in humiliating and degrading conditions.
In testimonies to MEE, one man, who was taken by Israeli forces from a school in Gaza where he had sought refuge with his family, described how he had been handcuffed, blindfolded, and detained in a metal cage for 42 days.
During interrogations, he said he had been given electric shocks, as well as scratched and bitten by army dogs.
Other men also described being electrocuted, attacked by dogs, doused with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and subjected to constant loud music.
“They did not spare anyone. There were 14-year-old boys and 80-year-old men,” said one of the men, Moaz Muhammad Khamis Miqdad, who was taken prisoner in Gaza City in December and held for more than 30 days.
As well as three men taken prisoner in Gaza, MEE spoke to a man detained in a raid in the West Bank city of Qalqilya who said he had been blindfolded, stripped naked, and hung by his arms during interrogations in which he was repeatedly beaten and burnt with cigarettes.
He also described being held for days in freezing conditions in which he was not allowed to sleep and of a soldier urinating in a bottle and handing it to him after he had requested water.
All four men described being forced to strip naked and being constantly beaten and abused by Israeli soldiers during their weeks-long detentions.
Sexual abuse and beatings: A Palestinian mother’s ordeal in Israeli custody Read More »
Their accounts of torture and abuse follow similar allegations made by human rights monitors.
Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza is already the subject of an International Court of Justice case in which it stands accused of genocide and an ongoing war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Last week details of an unpublished investigation by Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, alleging abuse of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners detained during the war in Gaza were reported by the New York Times.
Many of those details appear consistent with the testimonies of former detainees who spoke to MEE.
On Thursday, Haaretz reported that at least 27 detainees from Gaza had died in Israeli military facilities since the start of the war. It said some of the deaths had occurred at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel and the Anatot base in the West Bank.
On Thursday, Haaretz reported that at least 27 detainees from Gaza had died in Israeli military facilities since the start of the war. It said some of the deaths had occurred at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel and the Anatot base in the West Bank.
On Friday, Alice Jill Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, said she was investigating allegations of torture and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israel and was in talks with Israeli authorities to visit the country on a fact-finding mission.
Ramy Abdu, the chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor which has also compiled reports of torture in custody, said the testimonies of Palestinians released from Israeli detention were “deeply disturbing”.
Abdu told MEE: “These testimonies reveal a systematic pattern of abuse, including forced strip searches, sexual harassment, threats of rape, severe beatings, dog attacks, and denial of necessities such as food, water, and access to restroom facilities. These acts not only inflict physical pain but also leave lasting psychological scars on the victims.
“The use of such brutal tactics, particularly against vulnerable groups such as women, children, and the elderly, is reprehensible and constitutes a gross violation of human dignity and international law.”
Miriam Azem, an advocacy associate at Adalah, a Palestinian human rights organisation, said that reports of “pervasive torture and ill-treatment” inflicted on Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody demanded an immediate international intervention.
“Hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza remain held incommunicado, their whereabouts unknown. The urgency of the current moment demands not just attention but immediate and resolute intervention from the international community. Any failure to intervene poses a grave threat to Palestinian lives,” Azem told MEE.
The Israeli army had not responded to MEE’s request for comment at the time of publication. It has said in response to allegations concerning the mistreatment of detainees that such conduct “violates IDF values and contravenes IDF orders and is therefore absolutely prohibited”.
It has said its soldiers act “in accordance with Israeli and international law in order to protect the rights of the detainees”. It has said every death in Israeli military custody is being investigated, and that some of those who had died had pre-existing medical conditions or injuries.
‘They placed me facing the wall on my knees’
Naeem Youssef Salem Abu Al-Hassan, a 19-year-old from Jabalia, northern Gaza, told MEE he had been detained with other young men aged 18 to 25 after remaining residents were ordered by Israeli forces to leave the city on 27 December 2023.
By then, he said, he and his extended family had endured weeks of air strikes, tank attacks, and sniper fire which had destroyed much of the neighbourhood and killed a number of his relatives.
Soon afterward, Hassan said, Israeli soldiers had asked him to identify two bodies in the street who they said were fighters.
Hassan said he did not know the identities of the bodies and had no connections with fighters.
“They didn’t believe me and insisted that I recognised them otherwise they would shoot me and drop me next to the bodies. I didn’t know what to say. Then they placed me facing the wall on my knees.”
Hassan said the soldiers then kicked him and called him a liar. He was handcuffed, blindfolded, and dragged to a nearby house where other detainees were also being held.
“One soldier was smoking a cigarette and trying to burn me on my face. I told him I can’t take it so he started hitting and kicking me,” he said.
Palestinian men were rounded up and stripped by Israeli forces in Gaza seen in a video released on 7 December (Screengrab/X)
That night, the men were rounded up and taken out to the street where, Hassan said, they were surrounded by soldiers and tanks. Deep holes had been dug in the street and a soldier started to push him towards one of the holes.
“I felt, that’s it, he will definitely kill me now. This will probably be my last breath,” he said.
Instead, the men were loaded onto trucks. They were driven around for several hours, all the while being cursed, kicked, and beaten by the soldiers guarding them. Then they were moved to a different vehicle and driven around some more, still being beaten.
‘They unleashed them on us. The dogs would attack us, scratching us while the commander would continue to beat us with utter brutality’
– Naeem Youssef Salem Abu Al-Hassan
Eventually, they were dropped at an unknown location. Five soldiers came into the room where they were being held and continued beating them.
This pattern of being moved around in vehicles between different locations, all the while being subjected to beatings, continued over several days.
Finally, the men arrived at a location where they were forced to kneel on the floor, still restrained with handcuffs and blindfolded.
“We all remained like this for 37 days… almost naked in the blistering cold, our bodies exhausted, our souls drifting away. The food was barely enough to keep you alive,” said Hassan.
When the men tried to complain about the conditions of their detention, their captors brought in soldiers with dogs.
“They unleashed them on us. The dogs would attack us, scratching us while the commander would continue to beat us with utter brutality.”
Every few days the men would be taken for questioning. Hassan said he was shown images of tunnels and his interrogators would ask him what he knew about them.
“Whenever I said that I didn’t [know anything] they would slap, punch, hit, and kick me all over my body,” said Hassan.
“The soldiers with their commander would make a lot of noise… so we were not able to sleep and remained exhausted and completely strained from fatigue, starvation, and torture.”
One night in the early hours as he tried to rest, Hassan was kicked awake by a soldier and dragged to a bus with four other men. The bus took them to Karm Abu Salem, the main crossing between Israel and southern Gaza, where they were released.
“The commander screamed at us that we should walk quickly, but I could barely walk [because of] the beating and kneeling and the lack of food and sleep. The soldiers started running after us to scare us.”
Hassan said the men managed to drag themselves to nearby UN buses that were waiting to collect them.
‘They wanted us to stay between life and death’
Moaz Muhammad Khamis Miqdad, 26, told MEE he had been rounded up at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers on 21 December while sheltering in a school with his family in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Along with other men, he was forced to strip to his underwear. They were then taken to a nearby mosque where their hands were tied behind their backs and they were made to kneel.
“Then they threw us in a truck, where more soldiers and security forces railed at us with massive beatings and cursing,” recalled Miqdad.
The truck took them to a detention centre where the beatings continued relentlessly.
“They tortured us for hours, spraying us with cold water while we were almost naked. They were determined to torture us and break us.”
Eventually, one by one the men were taken to an interrogation room where, Miqdad said, the torture got worse.
“The soldiers asked where I was on 7 October and what I did. I told them I had nothing to do with the events of 7 October but they didn’t care. They attacked me with even more excessive punches and kicks, and this time with their weapons as well.”
Bruised and bleeding, the men were put in another truck and taken to a dark, cold room.
“I was naked, cold, beaten, starving, exhausted and completely drained. If any prisoner fell asleep the soldiers would viciously beat him on the head or chest to keep him awake. They wanted us to stay between life and death.”
After a couple of days, the men were put on a bus, this time with about 50 other prisoners. As the bus drove them to a detention centre in another area, they were beaten by soldiers, this time armed with iron bars.
Israel-Palestine war: Bruises found on bodies of Palestinians who died in Israeli detention Read More »
“If anybody would scream in pain, they would beat him even harder,” said Miqdad.
After two weeks in detention, Miqdad said he was allowed to take a shower. But even this risked incurring a humiliating beating.
“The shower time was limited to four minutes. I was afraid to take off my underwear and never have it back. If you were a second late in the shower the soldiers would tie you to metal bars and beat you for four hours. Soldiers and commanders would come and hit you with their weapons, metal bars, and boots.”
At night, the detainees were forced to sleep naked without any covers on the floor of what Miqdad said appeared to be an army barracks. Loud music would play at full volume.
During one interrogation, Miqdad said he was asked why he had remained in Gaza City, rather than going to the south, as Israel had told residents to do. He said he told them that he did not have the money to make the journey.
“They didn’t like my answer. They sent me back to the dark prison room, blindfolded. We were forbidden from making any movement or gesture. If we tried to adjust the blindfold to wipe away our tears and blood the soldiers would go crazy, shouting at us and beating us insanely.”
Following the interrogation, Miqdad said he was placed in a chair.
“They placed electric bands all over my body and electrocuted me with powerful shocks all the way to my head.”
After several more days of this treatment, Miqdad was told he was being transferred. He was blindfolded and put on a bus. Many of the other men on the bus were sick and elderly, he said.
The bus drove for a while and then stopped.
“They kicked us all out and threatened to shoot and kill anyone who moved from the line, or looked back, or tried to help one another.”
“A young man was totally paralysed from the harsh conditions so I carried him despite the fact I could barely carry myself. The soldiers saw me and started yelling and shooting but I did not care, I just kept walking and didn’t look back. In those moments he was not heavy.”
‘You think you will die a thousand times’
Omar Mahmoud Abdel Qader Samoud had also been forced to seek refuge in a school with members of his family after their house was destroyed by an air strike on 14 November.
After several weeks, Israeli soldiers came to the school and detained Samoud, his wife, and their children including their two-year-old son.
“They handcuffed us and blindfolded us and took us to a nearby hill,” said Samoud.
“Tanks were roaming around us, creating a deadly scene of horror and fear. In those moments you think you will die a thousand times.”
Samoud said he remained blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire 42 days of his detention, barely being given enough food to survive.
“The soldiers forced us to kneel for 24 hours. They would storm into the barracks where we were kept as hostages, make a lot of noise with their iron bars, kicking and breaking everything.
“The temperature was freezing, as [the cell] was made of iron, very similar to cages used for animals… The soldiers’ aim was to torture us, to break us, to show us who is the boss, and that our lives depended on them.”
Prisoners who raised their heads risked being sent to the “ghost room”, Samoud said.
“You become a ghost, unseen and unheard,” he said. “They tie your hands and legs, forbid you from going to the bathroom. They deny you water and food and leave you like this for a few days.”
Another room was known as the “disko”.
“A soldier dragged me on the floor, naked and handcuffed and placed me on a piece of rug,” Samoud recalled.
“The soldiers sprayed freezing cold water on me and placed a fan in front of me. They would leave me for a few days, without food or water or the possibility to get up and go to the bathroom. I urinated on myself and pleaded for mercy but they didn’t care.
“The soldiers would kick me on all parts of my body. Imagine yourself naked, handcuffed on the floor with five or six soldiers kicking you with their boots, hitting you with weapons and bats.
“Then they asked me to sit up. How could I possibly sit up? When I couldn’t follow their orders they would beat me even harder. They completely smashed me. I thought this nightmare would never end.”
Sometimes soldiers would unleash dogs on the captive men as they were forced to lie face down on the ground, still handcuffed and blindfolded.
“The soldiers would close the door and let the dogs torture us for the next two or three hours,” said Samoud. He said he had also been subjected to electric shocks.
During interrogations, detainees were restrained in their chairs by clamps on their arms and their legs. Sometimes these sessions would last from 9am until midnight, and in one of these Samoud said that his toes had been broken.
“Part of the torture technique was breaking the clamps while they are still on your legs. [The interrogator] came to remove them but started banging on them so fiercely that I cried out in pain. My toes were breaking but he kept on banging them. The pain was unbearable.
“They left me like that, my toes broken and bloodied for 20 days, lying around like a rug. I lost over 25 kilos while being held hostage and I cannot walk because of the torture.”
‘All were brutalised, tortured and humiliated’
Ali Nayef Muhammad Al-Masry, 34, was among a group of men rounded up during a night raid by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya in January.
Masry, who is from Gaza, and the other men had previously been working in Israel but had been displaced to Qalqilya when their work permits were withdrawn at the start of the war.
Following an army raid on the building where they were staying, the men were blindfolded, handcuffed, and dragged to a space alongside the fence separating the West Bank from Israel.
“They kept us there for about a month. We were workers but there were also sick people there, people with cancer, some of them were elderly. All were brutalised, tortured, and humiliated. There was no regard for human life,” said Masry.
‘When I asked for water, the soldier would laugh, go to the corner, urinate in a plastic bottle, and bring it to me to drink’
– Ali Nayef Muhammad Al-Masry
One day, Masry was among 10 men separated by soldiers from the rest of the detainees. The men were made to strip naked and kneel by the fence.
“An army commander came and waged a psychological war against us. He shouted at his unit, ‘Kill them all, every single one of them.’ Then the soldiers started shooting and we heard live ammunition all around us. I had no idea if I was dead or alive.”
The men were then taken to a room for questioning.
“The first question was: ‘Who do you know?’. And he showed me photos from my neighbourhood. If he didn’t like my answers, he would hang me by my arms, still handcuffed. My interrogation lasted for 10 days. All this time, I didn’t know when it was day and when it was night. I was freezing all the time. Naked, freezing, and cuffed.”
Other times, Masry said, his interrogator would burn cigarettes on his skin and kick him. He was made to sit on a chair that delivered electric shocks and was prevented from sleeping.
“The soldiers and their commander were monsters. When I asked for water, the soldier would laugh, go to the corner, urinate in a plastic bottle, and bring it to me to drink. When I refused, he would drop the whole thing on me.”
After several weeks, Masry and the other men were handcuffed and blindfolded, put on an army truck, and driven for six hours to Karm Abu Salem.
“Before they released us, they undressed us again and took our clothes. When they dropped us off there were 55 male detainees and six female detainees. They made us walk north and after walking a long distance the soldiers started shooting at us.
“Later we learned that the six women had been kidnapped from inside Gaza and were held hostage for three months. We didn’t know anything about them.”
Photo: Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with shirtless Palestinian detainees in the Gaza Strip, 8 December 2023 (Reuters/Yossi Zeliger)
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A Palestinian prisoners’ rights group has highlighted the “extremely difficult” conditions under which female prisoners are being held in Israel’s Damon prison, especially those detained from the Gaza Strip.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission said “The prisoners are facing extremely difficult detention conditions and are subjected to intensified punishments that are increasing daily,” since October 7.
It said the occupation forces launched a far-reaching arrest campaign “in the West Bank, Al-Quds, the occupied interior, and Gaza, against our female prisoners.”
“All of whom were subjected to torture and abuse from the moment of arrest until entering prison, whether through beating and insults, or naked searches, along with solitary confinement and deprivation of basic rights.”
The group said detainees from the Gaza Strip were deliberately subjected to the worst treatment.
One of the detainees relayed that an 80-year-old woman from Gaza arrived at the prison “walking with a cane and without a head cover (scarf).”
“Her body and clothes were covered in blood, and she seemed to know nothing, apparently suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
Forced to Abandon Their Children on the Street
Another detainee from Gaza recounted how she was arrested while she had her four young children in her care.
“Not knowing what to do with them, she handed them to a man from Gaza near her, not knowing who he was, and left them without knowing their fate. Others also left their children on the street when they were arrested,” the statement said.
All female prisoners from Gaza had their clothes confiscated and replaced with summer clothes.
They recounted difficult days before arriving at Damon prison, saying they “faced a lot of beating and assault in addition to continuous insults and curses.”
Some of them were left for seven days outdoors, in the rain and cold.
Hundreds of Palestinians who were detained in Gaza during the ongoing Israel’s invasion of the besieged Strip have been held for weeks at a detention facility in southern Israel, where several of them have died under unclear circumstances, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on… pic.twitter.com/Dv1d4y691g
“All female prisoners from the Strip arrived at the prison in a pitiable state, from all health, physical, and psychological” points of view, the statement stressed.
The rights group said “the testimonies represent only a very small part of what we could access, and what is hidden is greater.”
It said the prison administration deliberately isolates the female prisoners of Gaza from other prisoners and from the outside world entirely, in order “to continue committing its crimes without accountability or oversight.”
In November, the head of the group, Qadura Fares, told CNN that around 8,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails.
He reportedly said more than 3,000 of them are being held in what Israel calls “administrative detention.” This, he explained, means they are being held without knowing the charges against them, and without an ongoing legal process.
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — When I joined the CIA in January 1990, I did it to serve my country and to see the world. I believed at the time that we were the “good guys.” I believed that the United States was a force for good around the world. I wanted to put my degrees—in Middle Eastern Studies/Islamic Theology and Legislative Affairs/Policy Analysis—to good use. Seven years after joining the CIA, I made a move to counterterrorism operations to stave off boredom. I still believed we were the good guys, and I wanted to help keep Americans safe. My whole world, like the worlds of all Americans, changed dramatically and permanently on September 11, 2001. Within months of the attacks, I found myself heading to Pakistan as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.
Almost immediately, my team began capturing al-Qaeda fighters at safehouses all around Pakistan. In late March, 2002, we hit the jackpot with the capture of Abu Zubaydah and dozens of other fighters, including two who commanded al-Qaeda’s training camps in southern Afghanistan. And by the end of the month, my Pakistani colleagues told me that the local jail, where we were temporarily holding the men we had captured, was full. They had to be moved somewhere. I called the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and said that the Pakistanis wanted our prisoners out of their jail. Where should I send them?
The response was quick. Put them on a plane and send them to Guantanamo. “Guantanamo, Cuba?” I asked. “Why in the world would we send them to Cuba?” My interlocutor explained what, at the time, sounded like it had been well thought out. “We’re going to hold them at the U.S. base in Guantanamo for two or three weeks until we can identify which federal district court they’ll be tried in. It’ll be Boston, New York, Washington, or the Eastern District of Virginia.”
That made perfect sense to me. We were a nation of laws. And we were going to show the world what the rule of law looked like. These men, who had murdered 3,000 people on that awful day, would go on trial for their crimes. I called my contact in the U.S. Air Force, made the arrangements for the flights, and loaded my handcuffed and shackled prisoners for the trip. I never saw any of them again.
The problem is that our country’s leaders, whether they were at the White House, the Justice Department, or the CIA, never really intended any of these men to face trial in a court of law, being judged by a jury of their peers. The fix was in from the beginning.
Just a month after the September 11 attacks, the CIA leadership gathered its army of lawyers and black ops people and came up with a plan to legalize torture. This was despite the fact that torture has long been patently illegal in the United States. But it didn’t matter. There was no thought to the long term. There was no worry about what would happen if prisoners were tortured and then actually did have to go on trial. Nothing they said would be admissible. But nobody cared.
On August 2, 2002, CIA officers and contractors began torturing Abu Zubaydah at a secret prison. That torture was well-documented in the Senate Torture Report, or rather, in the heavily redacted Executive Summary of the Senate Torture Report. The report itself will likely never be released. But even in its redacted version, and with comprehensive footnotes, it paints a horrifying picture of what the CIA did to its prisoners. That torture, that policy, has come back to haunt the CIA.
Military trials have always moved at a glacial pace at the U.S. base at Guantanamo, Cuba, where the United States has kept a total of roughly 780 prisoners from the so-called “War on Terror” since early 2002. That number is down to a few dozen of what the government calls the “worst of the worst.” Only a small handful are cleared for eventual release, pending the identification of a country willing to take them. The rest will likely never be released.
The problem with charging a defendant at Guantanamo has proven to be several-fold. First, much of the evidence that the Pentagon wants to use against the likes of alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad accused al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah, accused September 11 facilitator Ramzi bin al-Shibh and others was collected by CIA officers and contractors through the use of torture. That in and of itself essentially doomed the cases from the start.
None of that information, no matter how damning it may be, can be used against them. Even the purported “worst of the worst” have constitutional protections, whether we like it or not. Second, what information that remains against each defendant is generally classified—usually at a very high level—and the CIA is unwilling to declassify it, even for a trial. Consequently, no trials progress except at the slowest possible bureaucratic pace. And if you’re the CIA, why would you care if trials proceed? Nobody’s going anywhere, whether they do or not.
With that said, the Pentagon is still willing to go through the motions. In 2006, the Pentagon initiated a program whereby law enforcement officers tried to get Guantanamo defendants to make voluntary confessions independent of what they had told their CIA torturers. That way, the torture couldn’t be used as a defense. But that effort failed.
In 2007, a military judge threw out a confession that these officers obtained from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi prisoner who has been accused of being the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing, in which 17 American sailors were killed. The Pentagon argued that the officers made clear to Nashiri that his statement was completely voluntary. But the judge held that after four years in secret CIA prisons, where Nashiri was tortured mercilessly, “any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before.”
This is the same reason that Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, and others have not been tried, despite having been in U.S. custody for more than 20 years. And to make matters worse, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, accused of being one of the most dangerous masterminds of the September 11 attacks, last week was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Relentless CIA torture at black sites around the world and at Guantanamo, has caused “psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder” so severe that he is not only unable to participate in his own defense, but he is so insane that he cannot even enter a plea and understand what he is doing. Defense attorneys said in court last week that the only hope of making bin al-Shibh sane enough to be tried would be to provide him with post-trauma psychological care and to release him from military confinement. That will never ever happen.
Bin al-Shibh’s attorneys say that in the four years between when he was captured by the CIA in 2002 and his transfer to Guantanamo in 2006, their client “went insane as a result of what the Agency called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ that included sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and beatings.” Bin al-Shibh ranted incoherently during a court hearing in 2008, and his mental state has been an issue ever since.
Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, and another accused September 11 conspirator, has had a similar experience. Like his co-defendants, Baluchi, who also goes by the name Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, is facing the death penalty, if he can ever get a trial. But he, too, was the victim of CIA torture. A 2008 report by the CIA Inspector General, declassified and released in early 2023, found that Baluchi had been used as a “living prop” to teach CIA trainee interrogators, who lined up to take turns knocking his head against a wall, leaving him with permanent brain damage. The report also said that in 2018, Baluchi was given an MRI and examined by a neuropsychologist, who found “brain abnormalities consistent with traumatic brain injury, and moderate-to-severe brain damage.” Like bin al-Shibh, Baluchi is unable to participate in his own defense.
All Americans should know about these recent developments. All Americans should understand that the purpose of trials would be to expose the truth. We all have a right to know what happened to us on September 11. Without that information, conspiracies run wild. Without that information, there is no accountability. We have a right to know about the planning for the attacks and about what al-Qaeda did to us. But at the same time, we have a right to know what the official government response was. Why did torture suddenly become acceptable? Who was responsible for it? And why weren’t they punished for obvious crimes against humanity?
In the end, I was the only person associated with the CIA’s torture program who was prosecuted and imprisoned. I never tortured anybody. But I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for telling ABC News and the New York Times that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by the president himself. I served 23 months in a federal prison. It was worth every minute.
Kiriakou a U.S. District Courthouse after pleading guilty to leaking names of covert operatives to journalists. Cliff Owen | AP
There is certainly no easy fix to this situation. The New York Times reported in March 2022 that prosecutors had opened talks with attorneys representing Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and four co-defendants to negotiate a plea agreement that would drop the death penalty in exchange for sentences of life without parole and promises that the men would be allowed to remain in Guantanamo, rather than to be transferred to a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners are held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Defense attorneys also said the men vastly prefer the weather of eastern Cuba to the snows of Colorado. The Times notes that such a deal would infuriate death penalty advocates among the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
I’m sure that’s true, and I’m sorry if their feelings would be hurt by such a decision. But as angry as they might be at the likes of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and the others, they should be at least as angry with the likes of former CIA Director George Tenet, former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jose Rodriguez, former CIA Executive Director John Brennan, and CIA contract psychologist and torture program creators James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, all of whom were the godfathers of the torture program.
They should be just as angry with the Justice Department attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who did intellectual handstands to convince themselves that the torture program was somehow legal. And let’s not forget that the buck has to stop somewhere. We also should blame George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. This cast of characters weakened our democracy by pretending that the Constitution and the rule of law didn’t exist. Their irresponsibility, childish emotion, and willingness to commit crimes against humanity guaranteed that the men who likely committed the worst ever crime against Americans will never be fully and legally punished. It’s up to us to make sure that future generations know that.
According to a Russian law enforcement source, the Security Service of Ukraine went after whoever they accused of cooperating with Russia in the region in 2022.
A Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik, on Tuesday, citing sources in the Ukrainian police, that torture chambers were opened, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), in order to elicit testimony from persons who had allegedly “collaborated” with Russian personnel while the city was under Russian control between March and November 2022.
According to the source, the torture chambers were established in two district police offices, Dniprovsky and Komsomolsky.
It was also noted that while the Dniprovsky department employed Ukrainians, the second location, however, was exclusively set for the use of foreign mercenaries who speak only English, Polish, and Georgian.
The source said a former business assistant, Vladimir Malina, who made the choice to remain in Kherson after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region was later killed in one of the torture chambers in the Dniprovsky police department.
“[He] was kept in the torture chamber of the Dniprovsky district department, [he was] brutally beaten, the next day, he died in the cell. In order to hide his death, for three days, two [former] employees of the Russian humanitarian center [in Kherson], Roman Gavrilyuk and Igor Gurov, who were detained with him, were tortured and forced to write an explanation that Vladimir Malina was released together with them,” the source said.
Malina was but one of many who lost their lives at the hands of SBU members in torture chambers, said the source, who explained that the Ukrainians had utilized a network of agents that identifies, arrests, and tortures people that they believed cooperated with Moscow forces.
Moreover, the source told Sputnik, “Activists, SBU agents from among local residents, who remained in the city after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops in March 2022, are engaged in the denunciation of ‘collaborators.’ Thanks to the information received from our source in the National Police of Ukraine, we became aware of the names of some of them, as well as those who suffered from their actions.”
According to Sputnik‘ssource, Russian law enforcement authorities have now acquired the names of persons who applied for positions in the Russian administration on the SBU’s orders with the aim to conduct surveillance missions against Moscow.
It is worth noting that Russia established control over Kherson soon after the launch of the military operation in Ukraine. In October, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye were incorporated into Russia following referenda.
In November, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the complete withdrawal of Russian troops and hardware from the right bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson Region, citing the need to build up defenses on the left bank. Soon after that, the Ukrainian forces entered Kherson.
Russia places Ukraine army chiefs on its wanted list
The Russian Interior Ministry on Tuesday announced that it placed Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Valery Zaluzhny on its wanted list.
“Basis for the search: wanted under the article of the Criminal Code,” the Ministry’s website indicated.
The state-run RIA news agency later reported that the Russian Interior Ministry had also added Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, to the list, citing the same search basis.
It is noteworthy that in late December 2022, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against Zaluzhny, as well as other Ukrainian military commanders under the article of using prohibited means and methods of warfare.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry underlined in a statement over Ukrainian drone attacks that targeted Moscow that Russia reserves the right to take “the harshest measures in response to terrorist attacks of the Kiev regime.”
“These attacks were planned and carried out by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime, for which the use of methods of terrorist attacks has become a sinister practice. Its representatives have long and openly called for ‘retribution strikes’ on Moscow,” the statement stressed.
The Ministry pointed out that the Western backing for Kiev was driving the Ukrainian government to engage in increasingly hazardous behavior, such as terrorism, violations of international humanitarian law, and war crimes.
The file photo shows Israeli soldiers detaining an elderly Palestinian south of al-Khalil (Hebron). (Photo by Wafa news agency)
Two prominent Palestinian rights groups have highlighted Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners, saying the Tel Aviv regime enjoys a culture of impunity in the absence of international accountability and systematically subjects the detainees to various forms of torture.
The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, which advocates the rights of Palestinian inmates, as well asthe legal-aid human rights group al-Haq, made the remarks in a joint statement at the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council on Saturday, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.
The groups went on to say that Israel’s use of torture and “cruel treatment” against Palestinian prisoners is part of its settler-colonial and apartheid regime.
They further noted that various Israeli institutions seek to conceal crimes of torture, although they are well documented with evidence.
The groups added that the regime’s military courts also refrain from documenting the torture of detainees in court records and extend detainment for further interrogation, while disregarding the clear markings of torture on Palestinian detainees’ bodies.
Addameer and al-Haq further denounced Israel’s use of administrative detention, which allows the occupying regime to incarcerate Palestinians indefinitely without pressing formal charges, or putting them on trial, saying the practice causes psychological distress.
“The psychological impact that repeated arrests and detention has on Palestinians cannot be understated, as it easily induces stress, depression, feelings of helplessness, and desperation,” they said, adding that the number of administrative detainees has doubled currently standing at 967, including five children.
They also condemned the occupying regime’s introduction of draft bills on the death penalty and limitations on medical treatment, as well as brutal prison raids, saying the new Israeli cabinet “is implementing a particularly hostile, radical agenda against Palestinian prisoners and their families.”
The groups further warned that “these measures give way to grave human rights violations,” calling on the international community to take immediate action to stop Israeli violations against Palestinians.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held at Israeli jails. Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Palestinian prisoners are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted, which is in sheer violation of human rights. Advocacy groups describe Israel’s use of the detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and have long called on Israel to end its use.
The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) keeps Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression all through the years of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, about 60% of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.
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CIA agents, military intelligence, military police, private contractors, special operations forces, and ordinary troops perpetrated treatment that can no longer be hidden behind euphemisms: it was torture.
A detainee in an outdoor solitary confinement cell talks with a military policeman at the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, June 22, 2004 (AP)
Marking the 20-year anniversary of the start of the US invasion of Iraq, Photo Editor of The Intercept Elise Swain shed the light on tens of thousands of Iraqis who were interrogated and detained in the early years of the war, where CIA agents, military intelligence, military police, private contractors, special operations forces, and ordinary troops perpetrated treatment that can no longer be hidden behind euphemisms: it was torture.
The shocking images published in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison– one of the world’s worst, most notorious detention facilities under the US occupation of Iraq– showed humiliated, naked prisoners leashed, electrocuted, beaten, and piled in pyramids, with smiling military service members laughing and giving a thumbs-up over their bodies.
As the scandal came to widespread public attention, senior officials presented Abu Ghraib as a one-time occurrence, the result of “a few bad apples.”
“We do not torture,” President George W. Bush claimed. Even after the CIA’s covert prison network was revealed, Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, continued to violate the Geneva Conventions.
Those in positions of power who played dumb while making torture a policy escaped accountability, as is customary in the US, the report argues.
Even after the CIA’s covert prison network was revealed, Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, boldly continued to violate the Geneva Conventions.
Despite all of this, there have been no criminal court indictments, personal or professional ramifications, travel limitations, or sanctions flowing up the chain of command.
“If the US is truly ever interested in rectifying the horrific violence that it unleashed on Iraq, it could start by apologizing to and compensating the survivors of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison,” Maha Hilal, the director of the Muslim Counterpublics Lab and author of “Innocent Until Proven Muslim,” said as quoted by The Intercept. “Until it does, U.S. gestures towards justice in any capacity will remain symbolic and disingenuous.”
Military contractors, who were complicit in and actively involved in interrogations and torture, walked away untouched.
One tiny piece of horrors
Like all legal cases, this is just one tiny piece of the horrors of the invasion and the occupation which displaced and killed many thousands of Iraqis,” Baher Azmy, legal director of the CCR, said as quoted by The Intercept. “High-level Bush administration officials have not been held accountable for the lies and the murderous violence that they subjected the Iraqi people to. So, this is just one small part of the legal story.”
According to a Red Cross analysis, the majority of the individuals jailed across Iraq following the war were innocent. 70 to 90 percent of “persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq” were captured by mistake, as per the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“I believe that achieving justice begins with revealing all the details about the torture and acknowledging them on the part of the United States, then giving reparations to the survivors who were tortured unjustly, for no reason,” Salah Hasan, a plaintiff in the CCR suit who survived Abu Ghraib, said as quoted by The Intercept.
This #AbuGhraib detainee did not want to be just a number, so he decided to speak up.
During his interview for #AlMayadeen, Mohammad Belandian describes the horrific scenes that he witnessed and went through in Abu Ghraib #US prison. pic.twitter.com/VPLKj887PC
One of those who filed a lawsuit, Hasan was arrested in November 2003 and brought through numerous detention facilities under US supervision, hooded and tied, before arriving in Abu Ghraib.
Hasan was stripped naked, held standing and hooded for hours, and restrained. Over the course of over two months, he described being kicked, beaten, deprived of food, and locked naked in complete isolation for the majority of his confinement.
Additional Abu Ghraib images were subsequently revealed more than a decade after the scandal broke. An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit compelled the Military to turn over further proof of Iraqi atrocities; the additional 198 images provided were “the most harmless of the 2,000 that were withheld,” as per ACLU.
Covering crimes
Censorship of this type – to conceal US crimes, specifically torture — has occurred numerous times. The full findings of the Senate investigation on CIA torture were never unmasked. The ACLU National Security Project chastised the Pentagon for continuing to hide evidence.
What the United States government can get away with is still impacted by the long-standing precedents of torture without trial.
“Though the Obama administration’s policy was to look forward,” Yumna Rizvi, a policy analyst for the Center for Victims of Torture, said as quoted by The Intercept, “the reality is that the lack of accountability has created an inability to move forward and essentially paralyzed the U.S. on many issues, including those related to the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo detention facility.”
“The United States of America should reconsider its policies, and at the very least, clean up the mess left behind,” Hassan said. “The U.S. must admit that it deceived the Iraqi people. But it is clear this is not in its consideration at all.”
The Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights published a series of reports in which it has been monitoring the human rights situation in Yemen since the start of the Saudi-led war in March 2015.
In one report, the organization provided verified information on a particular category of violations caused by nearly eight years of war in Yemen, which has been led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
This war caused thousands of civilian casualties, created a catastrophic humanitarian situation, suppressed public rights and freedoms, and deprived Yemenis of the most basic life necessities.
Since the start of military operations in Yemen, the Saudi and Emirati forces have been deployed to many Yemeni cities, islands, and regions. These deployments resemble a form of direct occupation through which the occupiers control public affairs, exploit resources and wealth, and have actual control over the management of all of the cities’ and areas’ capabilities.
These cities and areas had fallen under the full control of Saudi and Emirati military leaders and political figures who extended their influence using military and security formations. These were deployed throughout the cities and regions of southern Yemen, several strategic islands, and the city of Marib in the north.
Throughout the war, the Saudi-Emirati coalition took control of the city of Aden and established dozens of secret prisons. They also took control of Hadhramaut and turned Al-Rayyan airport and the port of Dabh into secret prisons. In Shabwa, the Emirati forces turned the Balhaf oil facility into a secret prison.
In Al-Mahrah, Saudi forces disrupted operations at the Al-Ghaydah airport and turned it into a detention center for those opposed to its presence. The forces from the two countries also established detention centers and secret prisons in Abyan, Marib, Al-Mokha, and Socotra Island.
In addition, many residents fell victim to arbitrary arrest campaigns. Reports and investigations carried out by international organizations and human rights activists surfaced. This resulted in the discovery of dozens of secret prisons and illegal detention centers established by Saudi and Emirati forces. These facilities were run by Saudis and Emiratis inside Yemen.
The detainees in these prisons were subjected to the worst forms of humiliation, and the worst methods of torture imaginable.
These detainees are usually placed in prisons administered by local authorities for a short time and then transferred to secret prisons and detention centers inside Yemeni cities. Others are transferred outside Yemen to prisons in Abha, Saudi Arabia and even prisons belonging to the UAE in Eritrea and Djibouti.
Hundreds of travelers were subjected to various arbitrary measures, from the moment they were taken to the detention centers in areas controlled by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates up until the deportation of a number of them to prisons and detention centers located on the territory of Saudi Arabia.
GIDHR investigated a number of violations that were cited in reports compiled by local and international organizations and committed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their illegal detention facilities and prisons in southern Yemen.
GIDHR reviewed information and testimonies provided by Yemeni detainees in Saudi and Emirati-run prisons during its investigation, all of which confirmed that opposing the Saudi and Emirati presence on Yemeni territory as well as rejecting and opposing the policies of the two countries was the only charge leveled against those who were subjected to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture.
According to information gathered and verified by GIDHR, detainees in Saudi and UAE prisons face the most severe forms of oppression, humiliating and degrading treatment, and torture that no human mind can imagine.
GIDHR’s investigations identified the following torture methods:
– Kicking and slapping
– Deprivation of water and food for long periods
– Beating with whips, sticks, and electric wires
– Electrocution
– Burning with cigarettes stubs
– Hanging upside down
– Shackling and hanging from the hands and feet for hours
– Hitting the extremities with hammers
– Sleep deprivation
– Denying access to toilets
– Use of insulting, “obscene and sexual” words
– Simulated drowning in water basins
– Forced to drink urine
– Forced nudity
– Prohibition from practicing rituals
– Prostrating to the Saudi and Emirati flags
– Sexual assault and rape
– Sodomy
– Threats of arrest and sexual assault of relatives
A Europe-based human rights organization expressed concerns over the imminent execution of dozens of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia, as Saudi courts continue to hand heavy punishment to human rights activists for expressing their opinion.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights [ESOHR] said in a statement that 34 people are currently on the verge of execution in the oil-rich Gulf country, noting that Saudi authorities have put at least 120 people to death since the beginning of January until the end of May this year.
ESOHR said that Bahraini nationals Jaafar Mohammad Sultan and Sadeq Majeed Thamer, who have been accused of ‘terrorism’-related crimes, face imminent “arbitrary” execution and could be killed at any moment.
“Due to the escalation of repressive measures in Saudi Arabia, the lives of these two Bahraini youths are in danger. Many other political detainees are at the risk of execution as well,” the human rights organization said.
Back in May, Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of Thamer and Sultan after finding them guilty of “smuggling explosives” into the kingdom and involvement in ‘terrorist’ activities.
The two Bahraini nationals were arrested in May 2015 along the King Fahd Causeway, which connects Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
They were held incommunicado for months after their arrest while being subjected to systematic and fatal torture with the aim of extracting false confessions from them.
In January, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions called on Saudi Arabia to halt the men’s execution and investigate their allegations of torture and ill-treatment.
International human rights organizations have called upon Saudi authorities to stop the imminent execution of the two Bahraini men.
The organizations have urged the officials not to ratify the death sentences, but rather, quash their convictions and re-try them in line with international fair trial standards.
According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, Abdullah al-Howaiti, Jalal al-Bad, Yusuf al-Manasif, Sajjad al-Yasin, Hassan Zaki al-Faraj, Mehdi al-Moshen and Abdullah al-Razi are among the Saudi teenagers sentenced to death.
Saudi courts, ESOHR went on, have recently imposed heavy punishment and decades-long prison sentences against human rights activists and democracy advocates for expressing their opinion.
It noted that Saudi officials have sentenced Nourah al-Qahtani to 45 years in prison for her social media posts.
According to Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Qahtani received the heavy sentence on appeal after she was convicted of “using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia’s] social fabric” and “violating public order” via social media.
The Washington-based group added that she was convicted under the kingdom’s so-called counter-‘terrorism’ and anti-cybercrime law.
Earlier, Saudi officials had sentenced women’s rights activist Salma al-Shehab to 34 years in prison.
The United Nations Human Rights Council said in a statement that the jail term handed down to Shehab, a mother of two young children and a doctoral student at the United Kingdom’s Leeds University, is the longest sentence ever given to a women’s rights defender in Saudi Arabia.
The statement, nevertheless, came a week before Qahtani’s 45-year imprisonment was revealed.
The UN rights council noted that Saudi authorities have taken advantage of the return to the international fold, following the savage killing of Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, to deepen their crackdown on political opponents.
Last month, ESOHR expressed grave concern over the alarming surge in executions in Saudi Arabia in the first half of the current year, saying the figure is almost twice the number during all of last year.
The new statistics fly in the face of commitments given by Saudi authorities to curb the use of capital punishments.
Last year, 65 people were executed in the kingdom, a slight drop from the previous year that ESOHR attributed partially to coronavirus restrictions.
“If Saudi Arabia continues to execute people at the same rate during the second half of 2022, then it will exceed the record of 186 executions in 2019,” ESOHR said.
Since bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in 2017, the kingdom has arrested hundreds of activists, bloggers, intellectuals and others for their political activities, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnation of the crackdown.
Muslim scholars have been executed and women’s rights campaigners have been put behind bars and tortured as freedom of expression, association, and belief continue to be denied by the kingdom’s authorities.
Over the past years, Riyadh has also redefined its anti-‘terrorism’ laws to target activism.
— 🇵🇸 ابو العز السوافيرى 🇵🇸 (@AboAlezswafery) July 2, 2022
On its part, Muhjat Al-Quds Foundation reported that, with Matar’s death, the number of Palestinians who were martyred while in Israeli captivity rises to 230.
The Foundation’s PR Director confirmed in an interview for Al-Mayadeen that the captive Saadia Matar was martyred as a result of illness and medical negligence.
It is noteworthy that Matar was arrested by the occupation forces in 2021 after a settler beat her as she was crossing the street near Al-Ibrahimi Mosque, claiming that she tried to stab him.
In this context, the Prisoners Information Office said the martyred captive, Saadia Matar, was brutally assaulted and severely beaten during her arrest, which deteriorated her health condition, further exacerbated by medical neglect.
Following her death, Muhjat Al-Quds Foundation reported tension growing in different sections of prisons with prisoners shouting and knocking on doors in protest.
The Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies warned, in a detailed statement, that the lives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons are in real danger, especially under the Israeli policy of deliberate medical negligence.
The center warned that dozens of Palestinian prisoners may die inside the Israeli prisons if they are not provided with the necessary medical care.
Director of the Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies, researcher Riyad Al-Ashqar, stated that 160 Palestinian prisoners, who suffer from chronic diseases, face “slow death” due to medical negligence by Israeli prison authorities.
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A study, carried out by Grant Liberty, a human rights charity Prisoners revealed that prisoners held for opposing the government in Saudi Arabia are being murdered, “sexually” assaulted and inflicted with “sheer” brutality.
The study identified 311 known prisoners of conscience in the era of Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud [MBS]–the kingdom’s leader who is the current crown prince, deputy prime minister, and minister of defense.
Researchers, who shared the report exclusively with The Independent, claimed that 53 prisoners have been tortured, while six were sexually assaulted, and 14 were pushed into undergoing hunger strikes.
The report looked at the plight of 23 women’s rights activists, 11 of whom were still behind bars, as well as also identifying 54 journalists.
Some 22 of the prisoners were arrested for crimes that they carried out when they were still children – five of them were put to death. An additional 13 were facing the death penalty, while four had died in custody.
Lucy Rae, of Grant Liberty, told The Independent: “Sadly the abuse of the prisoners of conscience continues as the world watches on, women are subjected to sustained and brutal violations with no basic human rights.
“We call upon the kingdom to back up its statement of being a ‘modern and progressive country’ with actions and release innocent individuals who were disappeared, were arrested and subjected to sham trials.
“Imprisoning, torturing and abusing an elderly mother such as Aida Al Ghamdi because her son has sought asylum surely is abhorrent and wrong in any nation.”
Abdullah al-Ghamdi, a political and human rights activist who is the son of Al-Ghamdi, said he escaped Saudi Arabia after being threatened for campaigning against authoritarian policies in the middle eastern country.
His mother, Aida, and two of his brothers were arrested after he left, he added.
“They were arrested not because they had committed a crime, but because of my activism,” Al-Ghamdi, whose situation is explored in the report, said.
Al-Ghamdi, who lives in the UK, added: “For over three years, my dear ageing 65-year-old mother and my younger brother have been held by the Saudi royal family. They have been held in solitary confinement and subjected to physical torture by cigarette burning, beating and lashing.
“It’s very hard to contact my family as this will put them in danger as the Saudi government told them not to contact me and give me any updates on my mother and brother’s case, so as of yet I am unsure of my mother’s charges.”
He said his mother was held for over a year in Dhahban Central Prison in Jeddha before being moved to Dammam Mabahith Prison. He wishes she was “safe, free and be able to rejoice with her loved ones”.
“There is not a time where she is not on my mind and it pains me that all my hard work hasn’t led to a definite answer for her freedom,” he added.
Al-Ghamdi said he had been “fighting to bring justice and freedom to the Saudi nation” since 2004 and secure a “democracy where there is an independent justice system”.
He said his mother had been tortured in front of her son Adil, who was also beaten and tortured.
“Due to her old age she has diabetes, high blood pressure and she suffers from regular abdomen pains; due to the unjust treatment and torture within prison her mental health has worsened,” he said of his mother.
“MBS and the Saudi royal family are holding her hostage demanding that I return to Saudi Arabia to face torture and imminent death so that people like me who stand for justice, equality and a fair society are silenced like those before me.”
He urged the “world, the UN and every single person with a voice” to speak out against “this outrageous behavior”.
Rae also cited the case of Loujain Al Hathloul, who was subjected to a travel ban and jailed for campaigning for women’s rights.
Human rights organizations say Al Hathloul has been forced to endure abuse including electric shocks, flogging and sexual harassment while in jail. Loujain, who successfully campaigned to win Saudi women the right to drive, was arrested alongside 10 other women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia in May 2018 – weeks before the country reversed the driving ban.
Rae warned it was imperative to “make people aware of the sheer brutality, murders and sexual assault happening to prisoners of conscience” in the country, adding it is “our duty as a human race” to protect the innocent.
“And we can start by demanding the release of these prisoners. Grant Liberty will not stop until every prisoner of conscience is freed and that Saudi Arabia is recognized for what it really is – a pariah to democracy and human rights,” she said.
South Lebanon – It has been a couple of decades since Lebanon was liberated from the ‘Israeli’ occupation. It is a 20-year old achievement that is being strengthened at every turning point.
Only children didn’t know, at the time, the true stories of pain behind the joy this event has brought to their lives, the ones who were used not to have a single place where they could spend their summer vacations.
What will be narrated below is just the story of one person. A southerner who decided to stand up against the occupation of his country. This person ended up spending 11 years behind ‘Israeli’ bars from November, 1985 until July, 1996.
Liberated detainee Hajj Ali Khsheish, who has the scars of those 11 years on his body and soul, told al-Ahed News about how he was detained, torture inside the prison, and the inhumane treatment of ‘Israeli’ collaborators.
Liberated Detainee Hajj Ali Khsheish at the Khiam Detention Center – Al-Ahed News, May, 2020
“In the beginning, we had a resistance activity inside an occupied area where the ‘Israeli’ was very comfortable to practice whatever he wants. It was a group of youngsters who decided to resist the occupier and hence we founded a small group that was known the Islamic Resistance.”
The early resistance men, he added, were under the ‘Israeli’ agents’ sight. For them, it was both difficult and dangerous to transfer a weapon inside the occupied territories. That’s why at the time, many arrests were made in the village of Khiam and other villages in the region. Members of different political organizations were also detained.
On November 11, 1985, Hajj Ali, as well as many other members of the Islamic Resistance were detained and taken to the Khiam Prison, better known as the Khiam Detention Center, which was located in Hajj Ali’s own homeland, and run by Antoine Lahd’s militia under the ‘Israeli’ administration.
Interrogation and torture
Interrogation was as harsh as all forms of torture practiced inside the place. The enemy, according to Hajj Ali, doesn’t spare an area in the human body un-tortured to obtain the information he wants. ‘Israel’ was dying to learn all information related to the resistance activities and how it is transferring weapons and exchanging information.
According to his own experience, Hajj Ali says he had been interrogated for four months in a raw. “During the same period, many arrests from Bint Jbeil, Markaba and Taybeh were made, so the enemy assumed that there is a common link between those groups, although every group was indeed operating separately.”
In the painful memories of his years behind the ‘Israeli’ bars, the man repeats that torture was very harsh. ‘Israel’ mastered its means of torture in that place, which were numeral and inhumane at every level. Electric shocks, electric cables, electric pole hangers, deprivation of sleep, food and restrooms, head covers and handcuffs, solitary cells, the ‘Chicken Coop’, insults, intimidations and torturing relatives… and the list goes on.
“We used to sleep in corridors before being transferred to cells. At the time, the prison’s area wasn’t fit to contain the huge number of detainees. While sleeping there, the jailer walks into the corridor and kicks us. Even when we are hanged on the electric poles we were also beaten…” the man said, adding that “they used to rub our wounds with salt, or warm up an iron rod to burn parts of our bodies… all of their methods were barbaric, they didn’t use any humane action when dealing with the detainees.”
Many detainees were martyred while hanged naked, in cold and hot weathers, and without food or water, for three days on the electric poles.
Such innovated methods were both directed and supervised by Amer al-Fakhoury, the ‘Israeli’ collaborator who in a couple of months ago fled Lebanon after being discharged by the Lebanese Military Tribunal on the crimes he has committed due to the ‘passage of time’.
Torture was not limited to the period of interrogation, it would rather accompany the detainee all over his time at the prison. This depends on how moody the jailer is.
Interrogators were focused on obtaining any piece of information about Hezbollah, and the activity of the Islamic Resistance. They focused on detainees affiliated with Hezbollah, their bitterest enemy who caused them a lot of pain. Even when the Islamic Resistance carries out a successful operation, they used to retaliate by torturing the detainees.
“They didn’t treat us as humans, they didn’t take into account any health condition the detainee could be suffering from. Even for those whose hands or legs were amputated, they used to beat them on that areas.”
The post-interrogation period
After the minimum of two months interrogation period and solitary confinement, detainees were transferred to 2-meter wide and 2.5-meter long cells. They were designed for five detainees at the same time. The cells were neither equipped with light, nor with toilets. “At night, we sleep in line, everyone’s head is opposite to the other’s legs…”
The room didn’t even have a restroom inside it, detainees couldn’t but use a bucket to have their essential need met. They were not allowed to speak inside their cell, nor anywhere else. Their voice mustn’t be heard, otherwise the jailer knows what he would do. Detainees were even denied the right to sun exposure. They were only allowed for 5 minutes every month or less in a small yard that they crowd inside it 10 to 15 detainees.
“It was barely one tour inside the yard before we are taken back to our cells. Speaking was not allowed there, neither was smiling at each other.”
Food, water and medication
Every portion of food served to one detainee per day wasn’t meant to fill the stomach of a baby. Two small toasts for breakfast, with three olives and jam. Then comes the lunch, an entire dish of unsalted stew to serve the five detainees inside each cell. And finally the dinner, also two small toasts with a boiled egg and a potato.
“We considered that we are living only because the angel of death was busy somewhere else. Everything inside the Khiam Detention Center was driving us to death, and this is why when a new colleague entered the prison, he told me that my family learned that I was dead, and that they held a memorial service for me,” Hajj Ali Khsheish recalled.
The place doesn’t resemble any of the world’s prisons. The maximum period of interrogation in any jail in the world is 72 hours, then the prisoner would be moved to a cell that fits for a human use. In this case, however, there didn’t exist even the least of elements of the human survival.
Minding the portions of food prisoners were served inside the place, it was subsequently understandable that they would be dined drinking water as well.
The jailers would deprive detainees from drinking water for three consecutive days under the pretext that the water service is cut off. “We used to demand drinking, even from the water heater, which was already rust, only to quench our thirst.”
‘Miscol’ was the multifunctional drug we were given, Hajj Ali said. It was an ‘Israeli’ drug, most of the times we discover it was expired when given to us, but the jailers used to give to the detainees every time they feel a pain, no matter what kind of pain or in which body organ. Detainees, in best cases, were injected with water instead of medicine.
Freedom of religious rituals
Detainees used to recite the holy Quran according to the memorizations, they didn’t actually have access to any hard copy, although they managed once to obtain a very small part of the holy book, which they secretly shared by turn.
In Ashura, for example, when the jailer hears that they are making any activity, he used to open the cell suddenly and start beating them.
Even in the holy month of fasting, jailers turn generous and force fasting detainees to drink and eat. Indeed, they pour water inside their mouths. Once, a detainee thought he would escape a forced breakfast, so when the jailer asked him if he is fasting, the detainee said no. The jailer, however, started beating and scolding him because he is a Muslim but was not fasting!
Tyranny anytime, anywhere
“Sometimes, jailers order detainees to cover their heads, it was up to their mood if they don’t want to see our faces. The prison’s regime was arbitrary. Everybody should be awake at 6, with the components of their cell be organized. Sometimes, they storm the cell at midnight, or even after, they force detainees to stand up facing the wall, raising their hands up, for an hour or two,” Hajj Ali added.
Other times, when the wrestling team a jailer likes loses, he takes a group of detainees to the yard and starts beating them!
As a result, detainees used to organize hunger strikes to raise their voice high…
The Khiam Detention Center Uprising
“One time, the detainees rejected food for three times because a jailer dragged one of us while he was preforming prayers and took him out. Detainees started knocking the doors. How would they do such thing during the prayers?”
The uprising started in 1993, and what was remarkable is that all detainees, even the women in their separate building, united with each other, without learning the reason ahead, they just heard the knocking and understood that some major thing was going wrong.
The jailers, however, threw gas bombs and fired some shots inside the already narrow and closed prison cells. Many detainees suffocated, so the others calmed down to save the lives of their fellows. After that, the jailers took around 70 detainees outside and started beating them until the strike ended.
The prisoners’ demands were access to sufficient food as well as sun exposure and restrooms, the basic needs provided in the rights of detainees according to the Geneva Conference. The prison’s administration responded to the demands. However, it was very soon that they backtracked this policy. The ‘Israeli’ policy was keen to keep the detainees’ only concern is to have food, sun exposure and toilets. Otherwise, if things remained comfortable, detainees would demand additional things the prison’s administration didn’t want to meet.
Hajj Ali no more behind bars
As part of a swap deal between the Islamic Resistance, that detained bodies of two ‘Israeli’ soldiers, and the Zionist regime, Hajj Ali Khsheish was released with the group of 40 detainees and bodies of 124 martyrs on July 21st, 1996.
Liberated Detainee Hajj Ali Khsheish at the Khiam Detention Center – Al-Ahed News, May, 2020
As free as before, he decided to continue the next period in Beirut, firstly to save himself and his relatives from any possible future detention, and secondly, which was more important to him, to resume his resistance activity.
Turning his back to the years of pain, Hajj Ali walked out of the place where he spent the harshest 11 years of his life… He returned, however, to the same place, after it was liberated during the liberation of south Lebanon and the withdrawal of ‘Israeli’ occupation in May, 2000.
Since then, he and several colleagues, dedicated themselves to explain to every visitor of the Khiam Detention Center how ‘Israel’ and its Lebanese collaborators have been involved in war crimes against all detainees.
Lebanon – Two Bahraini nationals Sadeq Thamer [33] and Jaafar Sultan [30], who have exhausted all their appeals, are at imminent risk of execution by Saudi regime, on the basis of his torture-tainted “confessions”. The young men have been arrested, without a warrant, on May 8, 2015, while crossing King Fahd Causeway.
They have been subjected to enforced disappearance [for 115 days], severely tortured and accused of “transporting explosive materials”. According to rights groups, 25 days after their arrest, they were supposed to be transferred to Bahrain. However, while they were on the bus, a Bahraini officer received a call and began to insult and threaten them with reprisal. Then, they were returned to the Saudi territories.
On the same day, their houses in Bahrain were violently stormed by individuals belonging to the Bahraini Criminal Investigations Directorate in civilian clothes. The policemen confiscated a laptop, computer, and phones, and their families were not informed about their whereabouts.
Sadeq and Jaafar were then taken to the Saudi General Investigation Prison in Dammam, where they were placed in solitary confinement for nearly 115 days [4 months].
After their families reached out to various Bahraini and Saudi governmental bodies, Sadeq and Jaafar were allowed to call but mentioned nothing about the condition of their detention and investigations.
During the first family visit, on 13 October 2015, Sadeq and Jaafar informed their parents that they were forcibly pressured to confess under severe and inhumane physical and psychological torture. In court, Jaafar told the lawyer that he was transferred to the hospital for 10 days because of torture and that he was threatened too with torturing his family members. Likewise, Sadeq was mal-treated, beaten, and threatened to be tortured and held incommunicado when refusing to sign the fabricated charges.
The Saudi Public Prosecution charged Sadeq and Jaafar with allegedly joining a terrorist cell, smuggling explosive materials, and misleading the Saudi investigation authorities. Then a Saudi Specialized Criminal Court sentenced them to death on 7 October 2021. Noting that also Bahrain’s 4th High Criminal Court sentenced them on 31 May 2016 to life imprisonment and a fine of 200000 BHD dinars for the same charges.
Sadeq and Jaafar are prominent religious and social activists and apparently, their arbitrary conviction is politically-motivated.
The use of the death penalty has dramatically escalated over the past decade in Bahrain, specifically rising by more than 600%, with at least 5 citizens being executed for political reasons. Despite pledges for human rights reform, some 26 men in Bahrain are currently facing imminent execution, 12 of whose convictions were based on false torture and were convicted of “terrorism” charges.
For its part, the Saudi authorities executed last March 81 individuals, marking a sharp rise in the number of recorded executions. This appalling death toll is likely to be an underestimate, as Saudi authorities do not publish statistics on executions or the number of prisoners on death row; nor do they inform families or lawyers in advance of executions.
Torture is rampant in Saudi Arabia, and courts regularly admit torture-tainted “confessions” as evidence. Thus, sentencing torture survivors to death for their peaceful activism is a heinous crime. While Sadeq and Jaafar’s helpless families await the news in anguish, the uncertainty of knowing that they could be murdered at any moment is an unspeakable strain!
A top Saudi court upheld death sentences of two young Bahraini nationals over trumped-up terror charges.
The Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia issues a final ruling to execute Bahraini prisoners of conscience, Sadiq Thamer and Jaafar Sultan
The Riyadh-based supreme court of appeals sentenced Sadiq Majid Thamer and Jaafar Mohammed Sultan to death after alleging that they have been found guilty of “smuggling explosives” into the kingdom and “involved in terrorist activities.”
Human rights organizations and an opposition protest movement described the rulings as “unfair and arbitrary,” saying they were issued based on confessions extracted under torture.
This come as social media activists have launched campaigns in solidarity with the two Bahraini youths, with human rights organizations and campaigners calling for an end to the “unjust” ruling and their immediate release.
Bahrain’s February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition held the Saudi regime fully responsible for the youths’ safety, calling on the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to take on his duties and intervene urgently to stop the crime.
The Bahraini opposition movement also called on the international community to stand up against Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and prevent the death sentences from being carried out.
The Coalition demanded swift action to save the lives of the two young Bahraini nationals before it gets too late, considering Bahrain’s ruling Khalifah regime as a partner in any criminal action against the Arab nation.
Sultan and Thamer were arrested in May 2015 along the King Fahd Causeway, which connects Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
They were held incommunicado for months after their arrest. The Bahraini youths were subjected to systematic and fatal torture with the aim of extracting false confessions from them.
Ever since bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in 2017, the kingdom has arrested dozens of activists, bloggers, intellectuals and others perceived as political opponents, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations of the crackdown.
Muslim scholars have been executed and women’s rights campaigners have been put behind bars and tortured as freedom of expression, association, and belief continue to be denied.
Over the past years, Riyadh has also redefined its anti-terrorism laws to target activism.
Bahrain’s most prominent cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim has said that drawing up a new constitution is the only way out of the political crisis in the protest-hit tiny Gulf kingdom, urging the regime in Manama to pursue an agreement with the Bahraini opposition instead of increasingly suppressing dissent.
Demonstrations have been held in Bahrain on a regular basis ever since a popular uprising began in mid-February 2011.
The participants demand that the Al Khalifah regime relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established.
Manama, however, has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent.
KIEV, UKRAINE — On March 7, Anatoly Shariy, a Ukrainian opposition figure and one of the country’s most popular journalists, received an email from Igor, an old acquaintance with whom he had not communicated for years (Igor is an alias used to protect his identity).
“Please help me find a place to live, suggest an apartment or an agent. I’m ready to do any work for you, whatever you say,” the email read.
“I realized that he was in the hands of the SBU,” Shariy told me, using the acronym for Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, notorious for its persecution of anyone accused of sympathy for Russia. “I understood whom I was talking to and did not particularly answer anything.”
Shariy suspected that the SBU wanted Igor to surveil him for an assassination attempt.
Four days later, Shariy received an email from a different address. This time, it was Igor, confirming Shariy’s suspicion that the first email had been written by an SBU agent. Igor explained that he had been interrogated and tortured for his ties to Russia.
“I realized that the SBU officers were preparing an assassination attempt on Anatoly and decided to agree to warn him that his life was in danger,” he told me in a phone call.
Shariy has lived in exile since 2012, having fled during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych and received political asylum in the EU. His opposition to the 2014 Maidan coup d’etat grew his profile and made him a target of Petro Poroshenko, who came to power in its wake. The neo-Nazi movements he had exposed in prior years had gained serious political power and intensified their aggression against him. In 2015, Lithuanian media branded Shariy as a “favorite friend of Putin,” and the Lithuanian government soon revoked his asylum. Shariy, meanwhile, had sought protection elsewhere and relocated to Spain, where he has continued to grow into one of the most popular critics of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
However, his predicament has hardly improved. In 2019, Alexander Zoloytkhin, a former soldier of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, published the address and photos of the house where Shariy, his wife Olga Shariy and young child live, as well as photos of Olga’s car. Ukrainian neo-Nazis demonstrated outside his house and he received numerous death threats.
Today, he is a top target of the Kiev government, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, and the SBU.
‘I helped him to become the president’
Shariy began his career in journalism in 2005, first writing for women’s magazines, and then conducting investigations into Ukrainian oligarchs, organized crime, and neo-Nazi networks.
He became a well-known critic of the 2014 U.S.-orchestrated Maidan coup d’etat, using his YouTube channel video blog to amass an enormous online following. Today, he has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube, 340,000 on Facebook, and 268,000 on Twitter, becoming one of the country’s most popular journalists despite living outside its borders for a decade.
In 2019, months ahead of the presidential election, Shariy founded a center-right Libertarian political party, naming it after himself: The Party of Shariy. Appealing to young professionals and small and medium business owners, Shariy’s online popularity transformed him into an important player in building a coalition, consistently polling between three and six percent.
Shariy actively supported Zelensky during the campaign, attacking the incumbent Poroshenko. “I thought he [Zelensky] was determined to follow up on his election promises. I helped him to become the president. It’s true me and my team did anything for him to get the post,” Shariy told m
Shariy’s activists were effective in disrupting Poroshenko’s campaign events.
“We were following Poroshenko everywhere we went with his pre-election tour. There were so many people in each city and town organizing themselves in groups and asking Poroshenko hard questions,” Shariy recalled.
In one July 2019 event, Shariy’s supporters trolled Poroshenko’s campaign motto – “Army – YES, Language – YES, Faith – YES” – answering “Shariy” instead of “YES.”
But Zelensky’s carefully-crafted campaign image of a political outsider dedicated to stamping out rampant corruption – copy-pasted from his hit television series, “Servant of the People” – turned out to be a farce.
Zelensky cut deals with oligarchs and stacked his cabinet with the same figures he spent his campaign criticizing. He spurned the coalition-building efforts that typify Ukraine’s multi-party parliamentary democracy, preferring to cut backroom deals for votes. He even sided with his former bitter rival Poroshenko’s own party in Odessa’s 2020 municipal elections despite his famous quote during the pre-election debates when he told Poroshenko, “I AM YOUR VERDICT” – “Я – ваш приговор”.
“When I realized he was not intending to change anything, the corruption was the same or even worse, we changed our mind,” Shariy said.
Following Zelensky’s victory, he proceeded to eliminate state funding for parties that received under 5% of the vote in the elections. Shariy’s party, having received only 2.23%, was among those that were cut off.
Spurned by the new president who he helped get elected, Shariy publicly denounced Zelensky, remarking that he should “curtail their state funding and shove it up their ass.”
Zelensky betrayed his campaign promises of reform and meaningful progress in the Donbass stalemate, leading to a rapid decline in popular support. This left a niche open which was quickly filled by the Party of Shariy. While older voters traditionally supported Viktor Medvedchuk’s “Opposition Platform – For Life”, Shariy’s online presence and style appealed to younger generations.
On the ground, Party of Shariy activists began to protest Zelensky with the same tactics they had wielded in his favor against Poroshenko, appearing at his events and demanding his resignation.
As Shariy gained political capital and was even considered a possible contender for the presidency in a future election, the war of words between him and Zelensky turned into a bitter rivalry.
Zelensky lashed out at Shariy, accusing him of “trying to increase your rating at the expense of my rating, the rating of the president.”
Ukrainian journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was recently arrested by the SBU, commented that Shariy’s party is much stronger than the polls indicate. “It is strange to think that the government would spend so much energy on an insignificant opposition party. All this makes us think that their ratings are higher than they are trying to show us,” he remarked.
Hunting dissidents on a political ‘safari’
Throughout the election, the anti-Poroshenko antics of the Party of Shariy were met with severe violence from the president’s base, which included ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists. Some who dared to ask Poroshenko difficult questions were beaten. In Zaporizhzhya, a man’s car was set on fire and a woman was assaulted by Poroshenko himself.
This violence continued after Zelensky won the election and his rivalry with Zelensky intensified.
At a June 2020 demonstration in which Party of Shariy members demanded an investigation into the politically motivated attacks on their members, neo-Nazi groups attacked using smoke bombs and tear gas, followed by brawls inside the subway. Afterward, these groups announced a political “safari,” offering rewards for attacks on Party of Shariy members. This marked the escalation of violence meted out against the political opposition, especially targeting the Party of Shariy and its supporters.
In one incident, masked men beat a young man in Kharkiv, leaving him severely injured and hospitalized. In Vinnytsia, men from the neo-fascist group Edelweiss beat a party member in broad daylight, breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung. In another incident, a member of the U.S.-trained neo-Nazi Azov Battalion attacked a member inside their party office.
While members of his party were beaten in the streets and inside their offices, Shariy was under threat. On July 8, 2020, he accused Zelensky of ordering his assassination, publishing a confession given to Catalan Police by Zoloytkhin, the man who had published his address the year before. Zoloytkhin was wanted in Ukraine for numerous serious crimes, including participation in the 2016 kidnapping and beating of journalist Vladislav Bovtruk. Zoloytkhin confessed to police that top figures in the Zelensky government had instructed him to murder Shariy, and Shariy published a video confession from Zoloytkhin.
In February 2021, the SBU charged Shariy with treason, accusing him of “spreading Russian propaganda,” and summoned him to an interrogation by the SBU. After he declined to appear, he was put on the national wanted list.
Shariy is blacklisted on Myrotvorets (Peacemaker), an online database of what its owner declared “enemies of the state,” containing personal information and addresses. The blacklist is affiliated with the Ukrainian government and SBU and was founded by Anton Herashchenko, now an advisor to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. The site accuses Shariy of violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and financing terrorists.
Multiple figures were killed soon after their names were added to the list. On April 15, 2015, Oleh Kalashnikov, a politician from the pro-Russia Party of Regions, the party of ousted president Victor Yanukovych, was shot to death in Kiev. The next day, Oles Buzina, a prominent journalist and author who advocated for unity among Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and campaigned to outlaw neo-Nazi organizing, was shot and killed near his apartment. The culprits were found to be Andrey Medvedko and Denis Polishchuk, neo-Nazis who had served in government and military positions – their confessions were published by Shariy. Yet Buzina’s murderers not only walk free but have received government funding.
The scene of Oles Buzina’s murder. Credit | Ruptly
Zelensky has opened numerous criminal cases against Shariy. He personally enacted sanctions against him, his wife Olga Shariy, and his wife’s mother, Alla Bondarenko. Shariy’s political party was banned in Zelensky’s sweeping March 20 decree that criminalized all opposition parties, accusing them of ties to Russia.
‘An ordinary person confesses at least to the murder of John F. Kennedy’
Prior to the Russian offensive, Shariy appeared often on Russian television, positioning himself as a neutral alternative to Zelensky and his regime of pro-EU neoliberals and neo-fascists. When Russian tanks rumbled across the Ukrainian border, he immediately denounced the invasion, calling the Kremlin foolish for invading a country that he believed would collapse on its own. Nonetheless, the threats against him intensified and Zelensky sought to eliminate Shariy from political life and kill him altogether.
On March 2, Ukrainian intelligence agents arrived at the Kiev home of Igor. The following is an account he gave to MintPress over the phone on April 7.
They took him into custody, handcuffing him and placing a sack over his head, then took him to a sports complex-turned temporary prison, connected to the main SBU headquarters, located in central Kiev between Vladimirskaya, Irininsky, Patorzhinsky, and Malopodvalna streets. Originally constructed as a Trade Union Palace following the Russian revolution, this building became the Bolshevik headquarters of Ukraine. Since 1938, it served as headquarters of the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation, the NKVD of the U.S.SR, and today, as a torture center for Russian prisoners of war and Ukrainians accused of having ties to Russia.
Inside the narrow underground rooms converted to an expansive state security complex, Igor says, SBU agents oversee members of the “Territorial Defense” – ultra-nationalist civilians and criminal elements who the government gave weapons in the streets in the first days of Russia’s offensive – as they beat, torture and even kill their prisoners.
Numerous prominent figures have been kidnapped and tortured by the Territorial Defense and the SBU. Among them are mixed martial arts fighter Maxim Rindkovsky, who was beaten on video and allegedly killed, Denis Kireev, the Ukrainian negotiator who was murdered after being accused of treason, and Volodymyr Struk, the Mayor of Kreminna, who was murdered after being accused of supporting Russia. Even Dmitry Demyanenko, former SBU head of the Kiev region, was shot dead in his car on March 10, accused of sympathy for Russia.
Russian MMA fighter Maxim Ryndovsky was captured by Ukrainian forces.
There is a horrifying video of him being tortured. I will not post it, but it's becoming a big story in Russia.
Authentic Ukrainian war crimes are now being used to justify escalating the war. pic.twitter.com/9xYrxJbSnn
In fact, the SBU is a project of the CIA. Following the 2014 coup, the security service was headed by Valentin Nalyvaichenko, who was recruited by the CIA when he was the Consul General of Ukraine in the United States. The CIA reportedly has an entire floor in the SBU headquarters.
In November 2021, Zelensky appointed Oleksandr Poklad to head the SBU’s counterintelligence. A former lawyer and cop with ties to organized crime, Poklad is nicknamed “The Strangler” – a reference to his favorite method of obtaining testimony from his victims. One article describes another torture method known as ‘The Elephant:’
“A gas mask is put on the victim of torture, and pepper tear gas from a spray can or a poisonous aerosol such as dichlorvos is launched into the gas mask hose. After such torture, an ordinary person confesses at least to the murder of John F. Kennedy.”
Shariy say Zelensky's SBU intelligence – which he likens to Hitler's SS – is using the Russian offensive as a pretext to carry out crimes.
The SBU also closely collaborates with neo-Nazi groups including Right Sector, Azov, and C14, which was contracted by the Ukrainian government to conduct street patrols.
‘A small Guantanamo’
Inside the sports complex-turned temporary torture prison, Igor says the sack over his head was replaced with a blindfold, leaving him only he could only see his legs.
A Ukrainian businessman who had long worked in transportation logistics – including stints in Moscow – a story typical of many Ukrainians, since returning to Kiev, Igor had maintained business ties to Moscow and Crimea, which had joined the Russian Federation after a successful referendum in 2014.
Several family members, including his mother, live in Russia and he regularly visited them until relations between the two countries reached a boiling point in 2021. “With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the events of February 24, my mother started to call me very often because she was very afraid of my status,” he told me.
Territorial Defense began to round up anyone suspected of sympathizing with Russia, as well as Ukrainians with cross-border ties, whether family or business.
Inside the makeshift prison, Igor says he identified 25 to 30 distinct voices of imprisoned men, and saw 10 to 12 men in Russian military uniforms, what he believes were prisoners of war. Two of the Russians were severely beaten in order to motivate the others to give on-camera testimony about their hate for Putin and opposition to the war.
Other detainees were religious people known for assembling at military installations to pray for peace and homeless people who had no way to abide by the evening curfew and were swept up by nighttime patrols.
While many of those inside the complex were kept for a couple of hours and released, others were severely beaten. “It was like a small Guantanamo,” Igor recalled.
Igor says that he was interrogated three times, with each session lasting between 15 and 30 minutes. The beatings were carried out by Territorial Defense volunteers while SBU officers instructed them on how to torture and asked him questions.
“They used a lighter to heat up a needle, then put it under my fingernails,” he told me. “The worst was when they put a plastic bag over my head and suffocated me and when they held the muzzle of a Kalashnikov rifle to my head and forced me to answer their questions.
But he says the suffering he endured was minor in comparison to the torture of the Russian prisoners of war, who were beaten with metal pipes while the Ukrainian national anthem played on repeat in the background. “I could hear it because all the torture was done in a nearby room. It was psychologically severe. This was done at night, the sounds of beatings were constant. It was difficult to sleep.”
Listening to conversations of other prisoners, Igor understood that two prisoners from Belarus were beaten to death, identifying one as a man named Sergey.
‘Like a Jew in Nazi Germany’
The existence of the torture prison was corroborated by an account I received from Andrey, a man with citizenship from Russia and a western European country (Andrey is also an alias to protect the identity of the source).
When he was first brought to the prison, Andrey recalls, he witnessed police beating what they told him was a Russian saboteur.
“It’s like mob justice, you know? You just find somebody that roughly fits the description and you take it out on him,” he said.
Tied to a chair, police repeatedly punched the man in the torso, the face, and back of the head as blood poured from his mouth.
“The police weren’t even interested in what he had to say. They would ask a question, he would start speaking slowly and they would hit him in the head,” he said. “They were taking out aggression and fear on him like a punching bag.”
Andrey says police threatened him with the same but he was spared because he held citizenship from a western European country. “I was told that If it wasn’t for my second passport, I’d be killed. I don’t know how much of that was to influence and scare me, or how much it was real,” he said.
During one interrogation, he says he was blindfolded, his hands were taped behind his back, and he was driven to an unknown location. After being taken into a building and up and down flights of stairs, he was thrown to the floor and kicked in the head.
Andrey recalls hearing ultra-nationalistic Ukrainian music in the prison. “Hard bass, electro, rock, rap – it was either to deprive us of sleep or to mask what was going on behind the music.”
Inside the prison, Andrey met Igor, who slept on an adjacent mat. He recalled being uncertain if Igor was an actual prisoner or if he was a plant that would attempt to extract information. In their brief exchanges, Andrey memorized a phone number Igor gave him and contacted him after he was released.
Andrey remains inside Ukrainian borders since his release, worried that the anti-Russia hysteria engulfing Ukraine could lead to his injury, or worse. “I’m like a Jew in Nazi Germany,” he told me.
Dan Cohen is joined by former United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.
Dan Cohen•Mar 1
They were very interested in his daily routine’
During Igor’s interrogation, SBU agents found contact information for his uncle, a former Soviet military officer. Believing that his uncle had influence in the Russian military, SBU agents called him to demand he facilitate an exchange of Igor for prisoners of the Snake Island incident.
When SBU agents found videos of Shariy on Igor’s phone, officers from a separate department were called in. From then on, they began to treat him better, removing his handcuffs and giving him larger quantities of food.
Igor’s connections to Shariy were minimal, limited to occasional contact via text message. In 2015, Shariy published a video about an incident in which Igor’s truck cargo was held for ransom by Aidar Battalion militants at a border crossing between Crimea and Ukraine.
Igor subsequently filmed interviews and events for Shariy, though they never met face to face. Nonetheless, SBU agents apparently saw Igor as an opportunity to gather sensitive information about Shariy’s habits.
Hours later, the chief officer came to interrogate him about materials and interviews he had worked on for Shariy. He was then given a blanket and allowed to sleep for two days.
After another interrogation, they instructed him to travel to Spain, where Shariy is taking refuge. “Their main intention was that I would stay at Shariy’s side, assist him in preparing materials, and report to the officers what he is working on, what his status is, what his family is doing, what foods he eats, and where he shops. They were very interested in his daily routine, his movements, and people close to him. They wanted me to be as close as possible to him and at his side as often as possible.”
It was then that Igor realized Shariy’s life was in danger.
“As far as I understood, based on the information that I had to convey, the liquidation of Anatoly Shariy was being prepared, since he poses a danger to the government of Ukraine and criticizes the actions of the SBU, the government, and President Zelensky,” he told me.
The SBU told him an agent stationed in Spain would contact him after his arrival and provide him with further instructions.
Another department of the SBU notified his brother of his arrest, demanding a $1,000 bribe for his release. “For the SBU, this is just a way of making money. They were detaining people and asking for money in exchange,” he said. His brother paid the bribe on March 10, freeing Igor, though Igor’s car was confiscated as collateral. “There are many cases like this. They take civilian cars for the needs of SBU and the Ukrainian army.”
SBU agents had assured Igor that he would be able to pass through Ukrainian borders and enter the European Union, a nearly impossible task for Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 who are subject to mandatory conscription.
After his release, Igor says he stayed in Kiev for ten days, resting and regaining his health. He then traveled to Transcarpathia, a region in Western Ukraine. Instead of following the orders of the SBU, Igor went to a different western European country. On April 2, he contacted Anatoly Shariy by email, informing him that he believes he is under threat.
“I warned Anatoliy Shariy that there could be an attempt to kill him in Spain.” Shariy understood that Igor’s call represented an extraordinary threat. “I was very tense with questions about the fact that he could be sent to me so that he could find out the places I visit, up to where I eat. The direction of these questions clearly indicates that they have the idea of my physical elimination,” Shariy told me by email.
Now in an EU country, Igor is facing an uncertain future and is unable to return to Ukraine. “I am afraid, not only for my own life but for my relatives and my friends,” he says.
Medvedchuk’s face is clearly bruised, apparently a result of beatings from Zelensky’s SBU goons. Don’t expect any questions about this image to appear in the pages of the NYT or in CNN’s 24 hour media circus. Can’t allow anything to undermine the pro-war narrative. pic.twitter.com/A0qhhmeaj8
With opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, bruised and apparently beaten, in the custody of SBU, the threat against Shariy is clear. He continues to receive death threats against him and his family, sometimes 100 per day, he says.
Left: “Look it’s your future.” Right: “I hope they will find you soon.” Screenshots courtesy of Anatoly Shariy
Dan Cohen is the Washington DC correspondent for Behind The Headlines. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. He tweets at @DanCohen3000.
Details of the murder of the elderly Palestinian Omar Asaad near Ramallah after being assaulted by the Israeli occupation soldiers are revealed.
Omar Assaad was blindfolded, beaten, assaulted, and left to die
Israeli media revealed that the military prosecution will close the case investigating the martyrdom of the elderly Palestinian Omar Asaad near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, after being assaulted by the Israeli occupation soldiers.
Yedioth Ahronoth said the military prosecution will recommend closing the case file of five Israeli soldiers accused of causing his death “for lack of evidence,” as per its allegations.
The cold-blooded murder
It is circulated that five Israeli occupation soldiers deliberately arrested the elderly martyr Omar Asaad, who was in his eighties, from the village of Jiljilya, Ramallah District, on January 12.
In the process, a temporary checkpoint was set up near the town, and Asaad’s vehicle was arbitrarily stopped. The elderly Palestinian man was blindfolded and taken to an abandoned house where he was severely beaten and assaulted before he was left lying on the ground in an under-construction building until he passed away.
The Israeli occupation claimed that the soldiers did not exercise excessive force against Assad, despite dragging him in the cold, although he suffers from several diseases, and deliberately covering his face and mouth with a piece of cloth, which caused him to suffocate.
Asaad’s body was discovered in Jiljilya in the early hours of Wednesday morning, with a black plastic zip-tie still brutally wrapped around one wrist.
The residents noticed someone lying lifeless on the ground, so they rushed toward him and took him to the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah for treatment. However, tragically, Assad died before getting there.
Such inhumane crimes are being committed on daily basis against Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF).
The Israeli prosecution has recommended closing the case despite the US demands for clarification over what happened, considering that Asaad was a US citizen.
The US State Department had stated, following the murder, that Omar Abdul Majeed Asaad was a US citizen and that it had sought clarification from “Israel” over the incident.
“We support a thorough investigation into the circumstances,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.
Rushing to fill this year’s bloody record of beheading its own nationals, Saudi Arabia executed a citizen from the al-Awamia Neighborhood in the Shia-populated Eastern Province of Qatif on Tuesday, October 5, 2021.
The Kingdom’s Ministry of Interior identified the Saudi national as Muslim Mohammad al-Muhsin.
Al-Muhsin was brutally arrested from his workplace at al-Araf Commercial Center in the Saudi town of Awamia in the eastern province of Qatif on Monday, November 23rd, 2015.
The Saudi regime claimed that al-Muhsin “was behind the killing of Dhaifulla al-Qarashi, attempted to confront the security forces, and opened fire towards them.” During the arrest, the Saudi regime forces opened fire, shot him in his leg and arrested him, while unlike their narrative, no security personnel was harmed, even in the reports circulating by the regime’s media outlets.
Locals, however, who were present at the time of the arrest, indicated that more than 15 security personnel stormed the commercial center, moved towards al-Muhsin immediately and started beating him using batons and the bottoms of their machine guns. They even forced customers who were at the place to lie on the ground.
Without providing any evidence on the fabricated claims, the Saudi authorities neither identified were the incident took place, nor the weapon that was used by the alleged perpetrator.
Al-Muhsin was brutally tortured during his arrest, not to mention the pain he had been through as the regime arrested him without removing the bullet he sustained in his left leg during the raid. He was also deprived from the right to assign a lawyer in a grave violation of human rights, as well as local and international laws.
After several delays of the show trial sessions, the Appellate Court of the Specialized Criminal Court decided to sentence al-Muhsin to death, in yet another brutal measure of many similar Saudi regime measures consistently targeting the people of the kingdom’s Shia-populated region.
The sentence was executed after the non-proved guilty citizen had spent almost six years behind bars, where only God knows what kind of treatment he had been through.
Nearly 200 human rights organizations have held the Zionist entity fully responsible for the lives and safety of six prisoners who tunneled their way out of a maximum security Zionist detention center earlier this month and were arrested later.
A total of 199 organizations, in a joint statement released on Monday, called for the formation of an independent international investigation committee to immediately look into the conditions of their detention.
“According to the testimony of lawyers, ‘Israeli’ occupation forces assaulted them harshly from the moment of arrest, causing multiple bodily injuries. The injuries necessitated hospitalization of some of them as they had been subjected to unjustified violence and torture,” the statement read.
“They are deprived of sleep, and have been interrogated after complete sleep deprivation, according to available information. Interrogators have made death threats against some of them, and their relatives have also been arbitrarily arrested for the purposes of revenge.”
The human rights organizations stressed that the mistreatment of the prisoners amounts to a violation of international and humanitarian principles.
They demanded the “urgent formation of an independent, impartial and honest international investigation committee to examine circumstances surrounding the arrest of the six Palestinian prison escapees, and to hold the perpetrators of violations to account.”
The organizations called upon Arab nations and expatriates to advocate for Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Zionist occupation jails, and to raise their cause through social media platforms.
The rights organizations asked the Hague-based International Criminal Court to prosecute ‘Israeli’ prison officials responsible for the torture of Palestinian detainees.
They urged the Arab League and its bodies to support Palestinian prisoners, and to activate effective mechanisms at the international level.
The rights organizations stressed that UN special rapporteurs, especially Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory Michael Lynk, should actively shed light on the Zionist entity’s systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and take the matter to the United Nations.
On Sunday, the Zionist occupation forces arrested the two remaining prisoners, who had escaped from Gilboa Prison more than two weeks ago.
A former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin and five Islamic Jihad members had tunneled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from the prison on September 6.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held at Zionist jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.
On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance, which is commemorated every year on August 30, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that, despite being “strictly prohibited by international human rights law in all circumstances, enforced disappearances continue to be used worldwide as a means of repression, intimidation and stifling opposition. Lawyers, witnesses, political opposition and human rights defenders are at particular risk of enforced disappearance,” he said. “This deprives families and communities of the right to know the truth about their loved ones, accountability, justice and reparations.”
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia practices enforced disappearance, on a large scale, especially against political detainees and opinion-makers through blatant circumvention and evasion. Most families of the victims are unaware of the fate of their relatives, after they have been detained on the street or in their workplaces, because they have been deprived the right to communicate with them and have no access to a lawyer.
In many cases, after a forced disappearance, that last for hours or days, officials at General Investigation Prisons allow the disappeared person a brief contact to inform his family of his whereabouts, only to return and disappear for periods lasting a year or more, during which he is tortured and denied the right to communicate with the outside world or access a lawyer.
In other cases, enforced disappearance extends without any information about the victim’s whereabouts or the reason for the arrest, for months or years. In light of Saudi Arabia’s intimidation policy against activists and human rights defenders.
The European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights documented the Saudi Arabian government’s use of enforced disappearance as a prelude to torture, extracting confessions, and in many cases the use of these confessions to issue death sentences.
Enforced disappearance is defined, according to the article II of the International Convention for the Protection of Persons from Enforced Disappearance, as “arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of individuals acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which deprives him of the protection of the law”.
During 2021, ESOHR monitored the practice of enforced disappearance by the security services against a number of detainees, including activists:
Abdullah al-Mubaraki:
On July 22, 2021, Al-Mabaheth forces arrested online activist Abdullah bin Awad al-Mubaraki from his home in Yanbu. The family does not officially know the reason for the arrest and news broke from the moment of the arrest. Despite attempts by the family to find out where he is, and to verify his whereabouts from the prisons of Yanbu, Medina and Jeddah, they have been unable to reach him. However, activists believe that the reason for his arrest stems from his expression of opinion, his participation in campaigns on social media to defend political and civil rights, and his opposition to government policies.
Lina al-Sharif
In late May 2021, officials from the Saudi State Security Presidency raided the Sharif family’s home in Riyadh, arresting Dr. Lina al-Sharif and taking her to an unknown location. Before her arrest, al-Sharif had been active on social media, discussing Saudi politics and defending human rights issues in Saudi Arabia.
Abdullah
On May 12, 2021, State Security forces arrested Abdullah Jilan, in Medina, after it stormed his mother’s house and searched him before taking him to an unknown location. Jilan was active on Twitter, calling for his right to work and fundamental freedoms in Saudi Arabia. So far, his fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
Najla Abd El-Aziz:
Saudi security forces arrested activist Najla Abdul Aziz Mohammed al-Marwan on July 20, 2021, from her home in the capital al-Riyadh. Najla is a young divorced woman and a mother of two children. According to reports, Saudi Arabia is still forcibly hiding her after more than a month in detention, and the family has no information about her.
Najla’s Twitter account shows that she welcomed and supported the call to demonstrate in conjunction with Arafa Day. A group of activists launched a hashtag called #Arafat_Day_protest, and called for participation in a campaign against the government’s policies and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with the goal of calling for the release of detainees, in addition to enabling young people’s right to employment, tax removal, and more.
ESOHR also monitored other arbitrary arrests. Local sources said victims were also subjected to enforced disappearance, including Sheikh Abdullah al-Shihri, who was arrested for tweets criticizing statements made by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Among those reported missing are Reina Abdulaziz and Yasmine al-Ghafili.
Continuous Enforced Disappearances:
In addition, Saudi Arabia regularly hides individuals, with no information on their whereabouts for years.
In April 2016, preacher Suleiman al-Darwish disappeared during his visit to Mecca. His family does not know any details about the arrest or its reasons nor has it been officially informed of any information about his whereabouts. However, the Ministry of Interior posted his name on its website, which is dedicated to identifying the names and status of detainees. The statement indicated that he was “under investigation”, but his name was removed after a while.
Al-Darwish is still missing and despite the request from the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances for official information from Saudi Arabia on his whereabouts, his whereabouts remain unknown.”
Human rights organizations that received information in May 2012 confirmed to them that Al-Duwaish was transferred directly to the office of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman after his arrest, where he beat him.
In August 2015, the Saudi government announced the arrest of Ahmad al-Mughassil in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Since his arrest six years ago, the family has not been able to contact him or to know his whereabouts. Although Saudi Arabia announced the arrest, it did not announce where he was being held or the charges he is officially facing. Information the family received about the possible murder or death under torture raised concerns that the family could not get any information about his condition since his arrest.
In January 2020, Saudi security forces arrested Mohammed Al Ammar during a military raid in Qatif. The Saudi government announced the arrest of Ammar, who had been on wanted lists for years, but the family was unable to find out where he was, and they did not allow him any visits. In light of information about his severe injury during the arrest. Al-Ammar was not offered a trial, unless his whereabouts were known to be in enforced disappearance.
Hide as an introduction to unfair judgments:
Besides the cases in which individuals are still forcibly disappeared, detainees face harsh sentences, sometimes up to death, despite being subjected to enforced disappearance at the time of arrest. Among them is Mohammed Al-Shakhouri, who was forcibly disappeared by the Saudi government for three days after his arrest, and who was then able to communicate with his family in brief call, not being able to know what he was exposed to for eight months. The organization has also monitored executions of detainees including minors, despite violations there were subjected to including enforced disappearances, such as Abdelkrim al-Hawaj.
According to ESOHR, the Saudi government uses enforced disappearance for a variety of reasons. While in many cases concealment is used as a prelude to torture in order to extract confessions, it is used for reprisal motives that refuse to disclose definitively the status and location of the person forcibly disappeared and to intimidate the community and families.
The organization maintains that Saudi Arabia, through its practice of enforced disappearance, is committing a “crime against humanity” violating its domestic and international laws. And it recalls that no justification for the continuation of this crime can be invoked, as affirmed in the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or the threat of war, internal political instability or any other exception, may be invoked to justify enforced disappearance.”
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 
