Israeli jails are routinely designed to torture people, according to Monitor

A group based in Geneva that fights for human rights says that Israel is torturing Palestinian prisoners and detainees and denying them their most basic human rights in an underground jail in the city of Ramla.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a new report that the terrible living conditions of prisoners and inmates at the center seriously breach international standards for conditions of detention.

“This prison serves as an example of the systematic Israeli policy of designing prisons and detention facilities to serve as instruments of torture, punishment, and maltreatment through the layout and form of the cells or detention rooms and the amenities provided within,” it added.

The group used video clips from Israeli media that showed Palestinian prisoners and inmates being chained up in underground cells with no mattresses or blankets and iron gates that blocked out the sun.

It was said that the fact that Israel built the underground prison shows that the regime’s prisons and detention centers are “designed to torture Palestinian detainees.”

The group also said that Israel’s choice to show pictures of prisoners and inmates in terrible conditions shows that the government has “disdain for the global justice system.”

They said Israel’s claim that the jail is only for the “most dangerous detainees” doesn’t justify breaking international law on detainee and prisoner treatment.

“This claim is untrue and frequently used as a pretext for torture and retaliation, as evidenced by the fact that thousands of detainees from the Gaza Strip were released after being subjected to cruel torture and unlawful detention conditions under the pretext of elite membership.”

According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, at least 30 jails and detention facilities have the same appalling conditions.

Aside from that, the group said, the Israeli government has built many prisons with the same terrible conditions since its war on the Gaza Strip began in October 2023.

It talked about the detention center at the Sde Teiman military camp, which has been compared to the notorious US prisons Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo for how awful it is.

The group asked the rest of the world to follow the law and stop the Israeli government from killing Palestinians in detention centers, jails, and all over Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

International human rights groups say that the Israeli government is holding over 10,400 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in their prisons. This is on top of the thousands of Gaza residents whose names or where they are being held are unknown, as well as the thousands who have been disappeared without a trace.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, more than 46,500 people have died. Most of them were children and women. They forced the 2.3 million residents of Gaza to flee their homes, leaving much of the besieged area in ashes.

It “is a logical outcome of a long history of impunity made possible by the complete impunity that Israel enjoys from the United States of America and many European governments,” he said.