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An HRW report denounces that Israel commits war crimes against Palestinian prisoners

Israel is committing war crimes by committing sexual violence and inhumane treatment against Palestinian prisoners, including children, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced this Tuesday, based on images taken and published by Israeli soldiers and activists.

“For months, Israeli authorities have turned a blind eye when members of their military publish inhumane images and videos of Palestinians in their custody,” Balkees Jarrah, HRW’s acting Middle East director, condemned the incident in a statement.

Many detainees were handcuffed, blindfolded and sometimes injured, stripped of their clothes, even stripped naked, and then photographed or filmed. These images were published with derogatory and insulting captions written by Israeli soldiers, journalists or activists, says the New York-based organisation, which analysed 37 publications.

“Enforced nudity, followed by the capture and sharing of sexual images on social media is a form of sexual violence and also a war crime,” it stresses, warning that “senior officers and military commanders may be held criminally responsible for ordering or failing to prevent these crimes or punish them, including by the International Criminal Court.”

Since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, thousands of Palestinians, mainly from Gaza, have been detained at the Sde Teiman detention center, located in the southern Negev desert. In that prison, Israeli authorities carried out torture, beatings and sexual assaults against Palestinians in areas without security cameras, many of them imprisoned without formal charges against them, according to complaints by the Israeli NGO Doctors for Human Rights of Israel and Amnesty International. (Efe)