WARNING: This article contains details of abuse.
It’s a photo that quickly circulated on social media: A man standing at a barbed wire fence, arms behind his head and blindfolded. A group of men sit behind him in rows, also blindfolded. Everyone wears the same grey tracksuit.
The image was taken at Sde Teiman in the Negev desert in southern Israel. Over the last several months, the obscure barracks — a military base partially converted into a detention facility during the Gaza war — have become the centre of accusations that the Israeli military is severely abusing Palestinian detainees.
In fact, due to widespread outcry, the majority of detainees have been transferred out of Sde Teiman.
And the photo, originally leaked to CNN in May, has become emblematic of those alleged conditions.
Freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife, who has been working with CBC from Gaza, tracked down its subject: Ibrahim Salem, a 38-year-old from northern Gaza who was in Israeli detention for eight months and was released Aug. 3. He confirmed he was the man pictured. CBC also independently verified that the image was of him.
Salem was held in multiple locations during his detention and was in Sde Teiman for just 52 days. But, he says, his time there was the worst of his detainment.
Among other allegations, Salem says he was stripped naked, psychologically tormented and beaten. And by the time he was released, the world had seen the photo of him — including his family.
CBC News reached out to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for comment on the claims in this story. It referred CBC to a previous press release responding to a New York Times story about Sde Teiman, largely denying allegations of abuse.
“The IDF rejects outright allegations concerning systematic abuse of detainees in the Sde Teiman detention facility, including allegations of sexually abusing detainees, electrocuting detainees and stripping detainees of their clothes during interrogations,” the IDF statement said.
Arrested at Kamal Adwan Hospital
Salem was still in northern Gaza in December 2023. He had been sheltering at the Kamal Adwan Hospital after his house was bombed, killing much of his family, including his wife, sister, brother and nephew. His kids were being treated for injuries at the hospital when it was besieged by the IDF on Dec. 11 during a search for Hamas operatives. That was when he was taken, he says.
“They walked with me a bit and then made me take off all my clothes,” Salem told El Saife.
“[I was] completely naked.”
He says he was never told what crime he was accused of committing.
Ibrahim Salem’s photo at the Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev desert went viral after it was leaked to CNN and spread on social media. Salem says standing at the fence with his arms up as he was seen doing in the photo, was a form of punishment he endured during his 52 day detention in the military base turned jail.
He says he was dragged by his hair and beaten. He was taken to an unknown location, he said, blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back, where he was interrogated.
An officer smashed a plastic chair on his chest, he said, allegedly breaking some of his ribs and causing him to briefly lose consciousness.
The officer screamed at him, accusing him of being involved with Hamas, which Salem denied.
He spent two days in another facility, he says, under similar conditions. After that, he was taken to Sde Teiman, where he says “the torture journey began.”
The photo of detainee No. 189
Salem’s remaining family recognized him in the leaked photo, he said. But, he says, it didn’t tell the full story of what was happening in the moment and the “worst days” of his detainment at Sde Teiman, where he was known as detainee No. 189.
“You’re on your knees,” he said. “Your hands are handcuffed, your legs are cuffed and you’re blindfolded.
“The first 10 or 15 days, my hands were behind my back.”
As a form of punishment, he says, detainees were made to stand at a barbed-wire fence for hours, sometimes on one foot, and were tormented psychologically by their handlers.
“You’re standing and they’re all spitting on you,” he said.
If he wanted to go home, or sit down, he says, he was told to repeat insults about his family.
In those moments, Salem says, he begged to not have to say them, and that he wanted simply to die with dignity.
One day, he said, a soldier ordered him to stand at the fence, blindfolded with his arms up. He says he did this for five hours — and it was in that time that he heard a click. They were taking photos of him.
The image ended up in a CNN article, leaked by the Israeli whistleblower who took the photo. The story detailed similar allegations of abuse at the facility.
Near the end of his detention at Sde Teiman, Salem says he was brought into a room where he was questioned about the Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza.
“[The soldiers were] asking me about the hostages. I’m a hostage,” he said.
“You bombed my house, killed the children and my siblings.
“Hostages? I have nothing to do with that.”
Months later, he was eventually released from Israeli detention, along with 14 others, in Khan Younis.
A day after his release, Salem sat in a tent in the southern Gaza city, the distance between him and his family massive — split by the war.
Allegations at Sde Teiman
Sde Teiman is one of three military bases partially converted into detention centres after the Israel-Hamas war began. Israel says it is meant to hold and interrogate detainees from Gaza suspected of being involved with Hamas. Many are held without charge or legal representation.
The Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed 1,200 and took over 200 hostages taken into Gaza, by Israeli counts. The ensuing incursion on the Gaza Strip has killed over 39,000, according to Palestinian figures.
Israeli law stipulates that Palestinians from Gaza can be held at military prisons, without a detention order, trial or charge, for over a month, according to The Associated Press.
Allegations of abuse from former detainees at Sde Teiman have become widespread over the last several months, particularly after Israel’s Channel 12 aired leaked surveillance footage that it said showed Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a male Palestinian detainee.
The IDF has previously declined to comment on the video, but military police arrested 10 soldiers suspected of being involved in the alleged assault. (Five are no longer under investigation.) The arrests triggered protests from far-right Israelis, including some lawmakers.
The majority of the detainees have been transferred out of Sde Teiman — just 28 remain, according to state filings viewed by the AP.
And since June, human rights groups have been fighting in court to have Sde Teiman closed. On Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court weighed a petition to do so.
State attorneys said reports of poor conditions were inaccurate, and that detainees were given food, water, regular showers and access to medical treatment. They said detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed over staff safety concerns.
As It Happens7:31Alleged sexual assault of Palestinian prisoner the ‘tip of the iceberg,’ says human rights group
Shai Parnes, a spokesperson for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, says he wasn’t surprised when Israeli media released a video that purports to show Israeli guards sexually assaulting a Palestinian inmate at the Sde Teiman detention camp. B’Tselem recently released a report documenting allegations of widespread abuse against Palestinians in Israeli detention. He told As It Happens guest host Catherine Cullen what they found.
The court gave the state a week and a half to give more information about conditions at the prison.
B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based non-profit, released a report last week based on the testimony of 55 former Palestinian detainees at Israeli facilities and the “inhuman conditions” they were held in since Oct. 7.
“Their testimonies uncover a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners,” it said.
What’s next for Salem
On the day CBC spoke to Salem, he was still calling family and friends to tell them he had survived. Grateful to be alive, he said his release was a surprise.
Salem was released a ways away from where he was picked up by IDF forces in December.
“They threw me at the border near Kissufim and started shooting at me,” he said.
Then, they told him to run.
“Don’t stop or look behind you,” he said they told him.
“Go to Gaza.”
Published at Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000
Musk blames cyberattack as his chat with Trump on X hit by technical issues
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s conversation with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finally got underway on Musk’s social media platform X on Monday evening, following a lengthy delay caused by technical problems that kept many users from accessing the livestream.
Musk, who has endorsed Trump, began the event at 8:42 p.m. ET, more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time. He blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, a type of cyberattack in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, though his claim was not confirmed.
More than 1.3 million people were listening about 45 minutes into the conversation, according to a counter on X.
Elon Trump interview off to a great start <a href=”https://t.co/JoY2sXYgF4″>pic.twitter.com/JoY2sXYgF4</a>
—@esjesjesj
Trump sought to turn the problems into a positive, congratulating Musk on the number of people trying to tune in.
The former U.S. president sounded at times as if he had a lisp, many listeners on X pointed out. Some said it made him sound like a cartoon. Others suggested it could be due to audio compression issues.
The technical problems recalled a similar event in May 2023, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suffered a chaotic start to his bid for the Republican presidential nomination due to glitches on the platform.
At the time, Trump mocked DeSantis on his own social media platform, Truth Social: “My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!)” Trump posted. “Yours does not.”
Ahead of Monday’s event, Musk had written, “Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.” X did not respond to requests for details or evidence of the alleged cyberattack.
Musk spent much of the early part of the discussion lauding Trump for his bravery during the attempt on his life on July 13, in which his ear was struck by a bullet.
Musk, one of the richest people in the world, announced his support for Trump shortly after the shooting. He had backed Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020, but has tacked rightward since.
Trump said he plans to return to Butler, Pa., the site of the attack, for a rally in October.
As the conversation unfolded, Trump delivered his usual mix of grievances, exaggerated claims and personal attacks, with Musk offering occasional encouragement.
Trump claimed without evidence that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if he were still president and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — all authoritarian strongmen — as being at the “top of their game.”
He also expressed anger that U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris had been swapped in for Biden on the Democratic ticket.
“She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started,” Trump said, claiming falsely that Biden dropping off the ticket was a “coup.” Trump had been leading Biden in many polls of battleground states likely to be critical to the outcome of the Nov. 5 election. However, he is now trailing Harris in some of those same states.
Light on policy detail
In an conversation that was light on policy detail, Trump also appeared to praise Musk for firing workers.
“You’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike — I won’t mention the name of the company — but they go on strike. And you say: ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’ “
Donald Trump returned to X, formerly Twitter, this week for an attempt at a live interview with Elon Musk that saw some technical difficulties, as the U.S. former president goes on the offensive against Democratic U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris.
The venue provided an opportunity for Trump to seize the limelight at a time when his campaign is facing new headwinds.
Harris has erased Trump’s lead in opinion polls and energized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies. Her momentum could get another boost from the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.
Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday morning for the first time in a year, posting a video highlighting his claim without evidence that the four criminal prosecutions he faces are politically motivated.
He quickly followed with a half-dozen other posts, reviving an account that served as a main method of communication in previous campaigns and his four years in the White House, including his followers’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Published at Mon, 12 Aug 2024 22:47:30 +0000
