(Kfar Yona) Israeli military justice on Tuesday questioned the soldiers arrested the day before as part of an investigation into alleged mistreatment of a detainee in a detention center where Palestinians from Gaza have been held since the start of the war on October 7.
In front of the military court in Beit Lid (center), dozens of demonstrators protested against the arrest the day before of nine soldiers, a case which has had a significant impact in the Israeli media.
Shortly after the suspects were arrested by military police on Monday, dozens of protesters including far-right lawmakers forced their way into the army detention center and demonstrated outside the military prison.
These incidents, widely reported by local media, continued to provoke reactions within the political class on Tuesday.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (far right) called on the Defense Minister to “immediately stop the mistreatment of army heroes.”
For his part, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir (extreme right), also called for the release of the soldiers.
For his part, opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Facebook that the eruption of protesters into a military compound on Monday was “a serious threat to Israel’s image as a Jewish and democratic state.”
An army spokesman told AFP on Monday that the investigation had been opened “following suspicions of significant mistreatment inflicted on a detainee at the Sde Teiman detention center”, without giving further details.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club, a Palestinian NGO that defends prisoners, accuses the soldiers of “rape”, a “new crime against a detainee at the Sde Teiman camp by a group of prison guards”, the director of the NGO, Abdallah al-Zaghari, told AFP.
The Sde Teiman detention center was set up to hold Palestinians arrested in the Gaza Strip after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7 after the Palestinian Islamist movement launched an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil.
In mid-July, Amnesty International urged Israel to stop holding Palestinians in Gaza in solitary confinement and subjecting them to “widespread torture.”
The NGO said it had collected information on 27 Palestinian detainees, all of whom told Amnesty they had been subjected to torture and other “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The Israeli military had denied the allegations.
Later Tuesday, the military said that in a separate case, a reservist had been charged with multiple counts of mistreatment of detainees and had used “significant violence” toward them.