In Could, a stunning CNN report primarily based on whistleblower testimony positioned Israel’s Sde Teiman army base within the Negev desert below the worldwide highlight and led to it being in comparison with the infamous US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba the place I used to be imprisoned for greater than a decade.
Three Israelis who labored on the desert camp doubling as a detention centre for the reason that starting of the Gaza conflict instructed CNN that they witnessed systemic bodily and psychological abuse of Palestinian detainees on the facility.
They stated the Palestinians imprisoned there, who’re held with out cost or authorized illustration, are blindfolded, pressured into stress positions, crushed, insulted, and prevented from talking for prolonged durations. Prisoners at Sde Teiman, the whistleblowers claimed, routinely have their limbs amputated on account of accidents sustained from fixed handcuffing.
CNN additionally revealed two images from the ability, displaying rows of males in gray tracksuits sitting blindfolded in an out of doors space ring-fenced by barbwire and lit by floodlights.
The report, collaborated by impartial reporting from different shops, in addition to testimonies of the launched Palestinian prisoners, made my coronary heart sink. It instantly transported me again to that darkish day in February 2002, after I was first despatched blindfolded and shackled to Guantanamo, the place I’d spend greater than 14 years in arbitrary imprisonment, with out figuring out when or if I’d be launched, and even why I used to be being held.
In Guantanamo, my expertise as a prisoner was certainly similar to the one described by the Israeli whistleblowers within the CNN report – an expertise outlined by a way of perpetual uncertainty and concern.
Simply because it seems to be the case with Sde Taiman, psychological abuse was rampant in Guantanamo. We had been routinely put in isolation, uncovered to excessive temperatures and threatened with bodily abuse. Humiliation via pressured nudity and sexual assaults had been additionally frequent. Sensory overload and deprivation, via prolonged publicity to brilliant lights and loud noises, or being pressured to sit down in solitary in full darkness for hours, additional chipped away our sense of actuality.
The similarities between Guantanamo and Sde Teiman are usually not restricted to the therapy of prisoners both. The 2 amenities additionally justify their existence, and supply authorized cowl for his or her excesses, utilizing comparable arguments and narratives.
The US authorities established Guantanamo Bay after 9/11 to detain and interrogate males suspected to have had a hand in these assaults, or different terror connections, with out being restrained by worldwide humanitarian regulation and different treaties that ban the mistreatment of conflict captives. The US authorities labeled all prisoners in Guantanamo Bay as “unlawful enemy combatants,” enabling itself to carry us with out cost, with restricted authorized illustration, and in blatant violation of worldwide regulation for years. Within the years after 9/11, the US “disappeared” numerous harmless Muslim males and boys on this manner. I used to be one of many 779 males and boys despatched to Guantanamo. However hundreds of others are believed to have been imprisoned and ultimately disappeared in comparable black websites and army detention centres around the globe.
Israel has been justifying the arbitrary imprisonment of Palestinians it perceives to be a risk on comparable nationwide safety grounds for a few years. Many Palestinians who’re imprisoned in Israel had been arrested below a quasi-judicial course of often called “administrative detention”. Beneath this course of, Palestinians are initially jailed for six months, however their detentions can then be repeatedly prolonged for an indefinite interval with out cost or trial.
Since October 7, identical to US did within the aftermath of 9/11, Israel has additionally been counting on its Illegal Combatants Regulation to indefinitely detain Palestinians with out authorized scrutiny and an opportunity of placing ahead a defence. The regulation permits Israel to detain people in amenities like Sde Teiman with out an arrest warrant for as much as 45 days. This era typically extends indefinitely, as detainees are moved to Israel’s formal jail system with out due course of.
One other similarity between Guantanamo Bay and Sde Teiman is the dearth of transparency. At Guantanamo, the US army has constantly, and considerably efficiently, rebuffed makes an attempt by journalists to realize entry to the camps, imposing stringent restrictions and censorship below the guise of nationwide safety considerations. This lack of transparency has solely intensified lately, with journalists encountering even larger boundaries of their efforts to make clear the realities of life inside Guantanamo. Israel, too, is working exhausting to maintain the media, and impartial authorized professionals, out of its prisons and army detention amenities like Sde Teiman. The plight of Palestinian prisoners in Gaza managed to garner international consideration solely because of the bravery of Israeli whistleblowers who took it upon themselves to reveal the abuses below manner there.
After the publication of the damning CNN report, Israel vowed to close down Sde Teiman. Israel’s Supreme Courtroom additionally sought solutions concerning the situation of prisoners held there in response to a petition filed on Could 23 by a number of Israeli human rights organisations. The petition known as for the closure of the ability on account of inhumane circumstances and extreme mistreatment that violated each Israeli and worldwide regulation.
Whereas these are promising developments, we should stay vigilant in demanding additional protection and true accountability to make sure the prisoners and practices at Sde Teiman are usually not merely transferred to a different, extra secret facility. In spite of everything, the abuses and illegality below manner at Guantanamo Bay have been uncovered many instances over prior to now 20 years, however the notorious facility in Cuba remains to be functioning, and nobody has confronted accountability for breaking worldwide regulation there.
I converse concerning the parallels between Guantanamo and Sde Teiman to attract consideration to the common nature of struggling brought on by detention practices steeped in secrecy, illegality and dehumanising cruelty.
In these Palestinian males imprisoned by the Israeli army in Sde Teiman, I noticed myself and lots of of different males and boys imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo. Our ordeals are so comparable, as a result of each Israel and the US imagine they will perform exterior the restrictions of worldwide regulation and do no matter they please to human beings they understand as a risk within the identify of “nationwide safety”.
That the identical abuses in Guantanamo have been duplicated in Sde Teiman underlines the pressing want for accountability and reform. It’s essential for the worldwide group to recognise and handle human rights violations in detention amenities – whether or not they’re dedicated in a army camp within the Negev Desert or a US Naval Base on a Caribbean island.
There must be impartial investigations and accountability for perpetrators. Insurance policies must be applied to stop such abuses from being repeated sooner or later. If we fail to take motion and search accountability for the blatant abuses of human rights regulation in Israeli detention centres, we’ll quickly come nose to nose with one other heartbreaking report about an inhumane jail camp in one other nook of the world someday quickly.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
