IDF Chief reinstates reservists accused of abusing Palestinian detainee despite ongoing probe

The five reservists accused of sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees in February 2025

Yaniv Kubovich reports in Haaretz on 16 April 2026:

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has approved the return to reserve duty of soldiers accused of abusing a Gazan detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility, following the dismissal of the indictment against them, despite the absence of a completed command-level investigation into their conduct.

According to the statement by the IDF, the five soldiers, all reservists in the Force 100 unit tasked with guarding the prisoners, suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee in 2024, are not barred from continued service.

“The investigation does not prevent them from continuing to serve,” the army’s statement said, adding that “the command-level investigation will be completed as soon as possible.”

Last month, Military Advocate General Itay Offir announced that he had ordered the dismissal of charges against the reservists accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman.  Offir cited several reasons for his decision, claiming abuse of process due to “the conduct of senior officials in the Military Advocate General’s Corps and the IDF’s law enforcement system in this case, and its exceptional and unprecedented circumstances.”

He also justified his decision by citing “complexities regarding the existing evidentiary basis” and the release of the security detainee to the Gaza Strip, which raises evidentiary difficulties.

Offir further noted a “procedural difficulty regarding the transfer of relevant investigative materials from a case being handled by the Israel Police, in a way that harms the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”

The reservists were charged last year with aggravated abuse and causing severe bodily injury to the detainee. According to the indictment, they beat him, dragged him along the floor, stepped on him and shocked him with a taser. The alleged assault resulted in broken ribs and a punctured lung.  The charges also state that one of the soldiers stabbed the detainee in the buttocks, causing rectal injury.

A doctor at Sde Teiman, an IDF base in the Negev Desert, used since the start of the Gaza war in 2023 to hold and interrogate Palestinians captured in the Strip, said that after examining a detainee who allegedly suffered severe sexual abuse by reservists, he “couldn’t believe an Israeli prison guard could do such a thing.”  “I was certain this was revenge by the Nukhba against the Nukhba,” added the doctor, Prof. Yoel Donchin, referring to Hamas’ elite unit that carried out many of the atrocities in southern Israel on October 7.

According to Donchin, the detainee was taken to the hospital in Ashkelon, where doctors found intestinal tears and broken ribs. “We saw that he had a stab wound in the anus,” he said. “I saw how the soldiers there behave. I saw how they bring in the detainees and how they force them to sing songs. I saw a wounded person who had been abused and beaten severely.”

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