Palestinian child says he was raped by Israeli interrogator
Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian child during clashes in Hebron on 15 December 2017
Tamara Nassar reports in The Electronic Intifada:
An Israeli interrogator raped a Palestinian child detainee in prison, he told Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP).
The 15-year-old boy, whose identity is known to DCIP but withheld for privacy reasons, gave his testimony to the human rights group.
Israel had placed the boy under house arrest in November 2020. Israeli occupation forces then took him from his home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiyeh in the middle of the night on 13 January. He was supposed to appear in court on that day. The experience of a night arrest alone is particularly traumatic for children and their families.
Israeli forces then took the child to the Russian Compound interrogation and torture facility in Jerusalem, where he was handcuffed and blindfolded in a hallway and attacked by passersby.
“Every two to three minutes, someone would come by and slap, push, punch or kick me,” the boy told DCIP.
He said he was then taken to a room where he was interrogated by a man who identified himself as Captain Kamel. “He kicked me and punched me while shouting and saying I should tell him what I did,” the boy recalled. He was accused of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.
“Whenever I told him I did not do anything, he would beat me harder. He threatened to shock me with electricity, but I told him I did not do anything.” The boy said that the same individual “knocked him to the floor while blindfolded and raped him with an object,” according to DCIP. The individual threatened to continue with the sexual violence until the boy confessed.
The boy said the individual then pressed him against the wall and inflicted intense pain on his genitals. “There are no words to describe that moment,” the child told DCIP.
Captain Kamel also threatened that the physical and sexual violence would continue if the boy told his lawyer what had occurred. Around 15 minutes after the incident the boy was allowed to see his lawyer for five minutes.
He was again interrogated in the hours and days that followed, subject to verbal abuse and forced to sign documents in Hebrew that he did not understand.