Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: The chilling testimony of a captive in Gaza

 

Walid Anwar Yousif al-Khalili (35), a Palestine Medical Relief Society (PMRS) Paramedic from Gaza City, married and father of 3 children, has given the following testimony to PCHR on 02 January 2024. (Taken from PCHR)

📑“I work as a paramedic at PMRS next to al-Quds Hospital in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City.  At 10:00 on Monday, 13 November 2023, I met by coincidence Dr. Marwan al-Refati, the owner of Family Pharmacy in Gaza.  I was wearing the PMRS paramedic uniform (a white coat with yellow lines bearing the Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems) and carrying a first aid kit. I was on my way to check on 3 persons injured in Abu Jalal Dughmosh’s house, so Dr. Marwan accompanied me.  After checking on them, we left the house together and walked on al-Mughrabi Street towards Barcelona Stadium in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, southern Gaza City.  At around 11:00 when we arrived at al-Sena’ah Street, east of the stadium, I heard a gunshot that hit Dr. Marwan in his abdomen.  I looked to the west from which the bullet was fired, and saw Israeli soldiers in a residential building right to the west of the Barcelona Stadium.  Only few seconds later, the Israeli soldiers, particularly snipers, fired another bullet at Dr. Marwan’s forehead, so he fell on the ground and left to bleed to death.  The Israeli snipers continued shooting at me, so I hid behind a truck parked in the area and luckily did not get injured.  At the time, I was hearing the Israeli tanks opening fire and firing artillery shells.  All of this happened at the beginning of the Israeli forces’ ground invasion into southern Gaza City.  I stayed behind the truck until 01:00 on Tuesday, 14 November 2023, when I managed to crawl towards al-Sena’ah Street and entered an apartment on the second floor in an empty residential building.  I stayed there until midnight on 15 November, when I heard 3 consecutive explosions and saw a red glow lighting the area.  Suddenly, I heard Israeli soldiers screaming, so I knew the attack was by the Palestinian resistance groups.  Shortly, the soldiers raided the building I was staying in and blew up the apartments’ doors, including my apartment, with explosives and grenades. I went to hide in a closet while the Israeli soldiers were searching the apartments, which were all empty.  They then left the building and fired shells and incendiary bombs, setting the building on fire.  I rushed out of the apartment toward the elevator, which was out-of-service, and used its ropes and cables to climb down until I reached the basement and got out through the window to a nearby villa, which was empty as well. I stayed in the villa for some time and slept until noon out of exhaustion.  I then went to the villa’s roof to see tents set up by the soldiers with Israeli tanks and vehicles surrounding the area.  I went downstairs and sent 2 messages to my wife and Dr. ‘Aaed Yaghi, PMRS’s Director, telling them about what happened with me.

 

📅 At around 15:30 on Wednesday, 15 November 2023, the Israeli soldiers raided the villa amid shooting and I saw laser lights, so I shouted at them to stop and help me in Hebrew.  The soldiers stopped shooting and one of them ordered me to take off my clothes, except for my boxer, and sit with his head down on knees. I was then handcuffed behind my bank and blindfolded, and they then walked me out to another house.  They removed the blindfold and I saw 20 soldiers in green uniforms bearing the American flag.  Suddenly, they started punching me and continued for a long time, fracturing some of my breastbones.  They then set me to a polygraph asking me why I was here and I answered them in details.  They then asked me if I did any phone calls and I said yes but the polygraph made a sound.  Suddenly, I was beaten and electrically shocked, so I changed my answer to no I just sent 2 text messages to my wife and my boss.  However, they kept beating me and showed me pictures of a tunnel accusing me of coming out of it, kidnapping Israelis and Americans, and being a from the Hamas elite forces spying on the Israeli soldiers and existing in a combat zone.  I denied all of that, but they electrically shocked me 5 times and severely beat me all over my body, causing unbearable pains due to breaking my ribs and injuring my head.  After not being able to bear the pain anymore, I admitted to all the accusations and they took me handcuffed behind my back, blindfolded and wearing only my underwear in a troop carrier, where there was a soldier speaking Arabic fluently and treated me well.  He offered me water and biscuits and loosen the blindfold and the plastic ties. The carrier travelled for some time and then stopped to throw me on the ground.  The soldiers again beat me while I was on the ground, spit on me and peed as well.  They then brought me back to the carrier, which kept going and then stopped again to deploy the Israeli soldiers in other places.  All the way I was subjected to the same abuses.  I was then taken to a destroyed house, where I stayed all night and was forced by the soldiers to sleep on the floor that was covered with broken glass and scattered rubble; during which, the soldiers were stepping on me causing bruises all over my body.

 

◼️In the morning, I was taken in the troop carrier to Israel and I knew that after hearing setters’ children swearing at me and seeing them from behind the blindfold. We arrived at a military site that I did not know where it was nor its name.  I appeared before a military investigator from the Golani brigade, who forced me to take a pill presumably of hallucinatory effects with a very small amount of water and when I asked for more water, the investigator refused.  The soldiers then put me a diaper and a kaki jumpsuit and I lied on the bed after they placed an iron ring around my head and steel handcuffs in my feet that were both used to sporadically shock me in the head and feet.  The investigator started to utter specific words waiting for my answer like (weapon-Hamas-hostages-tunnels- October 7th) and when I do not answer or the investigator did not like my answer, he shocks me.  Honestly, I was feeling very weird like flying in the sky and not fully aware to be able to respond to the questions.  I remained like this for days during which I was forced to take the hallucinatory pills and electrically shocked, imagining myself in our house and calling my family.  They offered me no food nor water and I was still wearing a diaper not feeling like going to the bathroom.

 

◼️Few days later, I was taken in a bus to a detention facility, which I did not where it was nor its name, while I was blindfolded and handcuffed.  After being examined by several doctors inside the prison, the doctors noticed how exhausted I was and decided to cease the investigations with me for 2 days.  I stayed in a room without windows and with one bed.  Two days later, I was then subjected to investigations by 2 investigators identifying themselves from the Shin Bet along with 5 other masked persons, who stood behind the chair I was tied to with my hands to the back and my feet to the chair feet. Before starting their investigation, I was forced to take the hallucinatory pill and the masked persons strongly pulled my hands to the back, causing me a severe pain and I fainted for some time.  They then started investigating me and again addressing me with the same accusations that I belong to Hamas and took part in the October 7th events as a member of al-Qassam’s elite forces.  I denied all of that, so they forced him into Shabeh (shackling his hands and legs to the chair) until I wished to die wanting relief from pain and agony. This continued for several hours sporadically, and they then forced me out to a yard for sometime with my hands tied.  Whenever I move my hands, the cuffs press on my writs, causing injuries and leaving signs on them.  They then returned me to the investigation room and forced me again in the Shabeh position but this time tying me to the door for hours.

 

◼️Afterwards, I was taken to a prison that may have been called Itamar, according to what some of the detainees later learned. The prison contained several iron cages with 100 detainees in each and surrounded by barbed wires. All detainees were blindfolded and tied with plastic wires as well as steel handcuffs in front of them. They gave the detainees clothes (gray pajamas), a mattress, blanket, and food, which were only 3 small meals that is barely enough for one person, and they hardly allowed the detainees to go to the bathroom. The prison routine on a daily basis from 05:00 in the morning until 12:00 midnight was the soldiers forcing the detainees to sit on the ground on their knees and prevented them from speaking to each other all the time while most of the detainees were subjected for interrogation every two days.

 

◼️In one of the interrogation sessions, an investigator interrogated me introducing himself from the Mossad and that he came to interrogate me about me involving in kidnapping foreigners, especially Americans. He threatened to kill me if I did not confess, and persons accompanying him started punching me for some time and then again forced me to take a hallucinogenic pill. They took me to another room, where I heard gunshots and soldiers pretending to escape and that members of Hamas took over the place and entered the room asking me about the brigade I belong to, where I live, and the mosque near me. I told them I am a paramedic and do not belong to Hamas or Al-Qassam (it turned out that they were so-called “birds”, who are deployed among detainees to deceive them and obtain confessions from them). They then left, and soldiers came in and took me to another place, which was a container.  There was an investigator who said he was from Golani brigade. The soldiers tied my feet with a chain and pulled me to the ceiling. My head was dangling down putting his head into a bucket of water. I was extremely thirsty so I drank a large amount of water. They pressed my head down in the water for some time, and shackled my hands and feet that I barely touched the ground in front of the investigation room for several hours. After taking me down, they returned me to the room, and the investigator drew an ambulance on the wall asking me to drive it and bring Sinwar, Hamas Leader. I told him there was no fuel in the ambulance, so he gave me an electric shock. I pretended to be driving the ambulance and heading to Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. After I returned, I told him that Sinwar had gone to Egypt. The investigator laughed and said that he would go to Al-Nasr neighborhood in Gaza City and bring Sinwar. A female soldier then came in, gave me a piece of chocolate, and took me back to the cage.

 

In one of the investigation rounds, they took me naked except for my boxer to a yard, poured cold water on me, and turned on the fans, causing me to freeze.

 

♦️While I was in the cage inside the prison, one of the detainees died in the same cage.  The detainees got outraged, carried him, and chanted that he was a martyr of torture, so the soldiers stormed the cage I was in and the other cages, threw sound bombs, and assaulted all the detainees with batons. Two days later, a second detainee (foot amputee/a person with disability) died in a nearby cage after being severely beaten on the head when the soldiers raided the cages. Although I was blindfolded, I noticed subjecting other detainees into shabeh positions in the cold rainy weather, whether while interrogating them or in order to punish them because they spoke to each other. I was also hearing the Israeli soldiers calling the detainees by their names for interrogation, punishment, or Shabeh. One of the names I heard was Dr. Muhammad Abu Silmiyah, Director of Al-Shifa Complex in Gaza City, Dr. Saif El-Jamal and Dr. ‘Abd Rabbo.

 

♦️I want to add that I was subjected to Shabeh on a wire twice only for speaking with a detainee next to me. during my last night in the prison, the soldiers called about 30 detainees, including me, and took us in a bus for several hours with our hands and feet tied, blindfolded and looking down.  They beat us all the way to Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. After arriving, the border guards forced us to collect the trash and clean the yard inside the crossing for a while.  They then told us to run to the west towards an UNRWA place. When we arrived, a female UNRWA employee of a foreign nationality received us and gave us food and drinks (rice, meat, biscuits, chocolate, tea, and coffee). We ate the food after being deprived of food for a long time, as we were only offered small meals and not sometimes no food at all (baguette, labneh, tuna, and jam, but in small amount). Afterwards, we walked until we reached the Rafah crossing, where we met individuals introducing themselves from the Internal Security. They wrote down our personal data, and allowed us to leave.  We took a minibus that drove us to Rafah, where I learned that the date was 23 December 2023, and thus my detention was for 41 days. I was able to reach my colleagues in the PMRS who evacuated from Gaza City to Rafah, and others who were already residents of Rafah and I am staying with them now.