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The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International on Thursday accused Israel of mistreating and torturing Palestinian prisoners.
Under the Unlawful Combatants Law, Israel systematically detains Palestinians “incommunicado,” the group said, with the detainees being denied access to lawyers or contact with their families.
The report, based on interviews with 27 Palestinians including five women and a 14-year-old boy, includes allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by Israeli forces.
One man, a 57-year-old pediatrician detained during a raid on a hospital in Gaza City in December 2023, said he was kept handcuffed and blindfolded for 45 days at a military camp while suffering starvation and beatings.
Israel has not commented on the allegations in the report. It has previously denied accusations of torture and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners.
The Amnesty report criticized the Unlawful Combatants Law, which has been extended a number of times since the conflict began after Palestinian resistance group Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Since then, Israel has killed more than 38,840 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza, according to figures from the local health officials.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, according to Israeli figures.
The war has destroyed much of Gaza’s housing and other infrastructure, leaving almost all of the population displaced and short of food and drinking water.
Amnesty said that Israel is sidestepping international human rights conventions by labeling the detainees “unlawful combatants.”
It said it is “calling for all detainees held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, including suspected members of armed groups, to be treated humanely and given access to lawyers.”
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