Palestinian prisoners face ‘all kinds of torture’

The head of the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital said yesterday after being freed from more than seven months of detention that he had been “tortured” by Israel.

Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya was among more than 50 Palestinians released and returned to Gaza for treatment, according to an Israeli minister and a medical source in the besieged territory.

Salmiya said he was put through “severe torture” during his detention, which left him with a broken thumb.

“Prisoners are subjected to all kinds of torture,” he told a press conference. “Several inmates died in interrogation centres and were deprived of food and medicine.”

“For two months no prisoner ate more than a loaf of bread a day,” said Salmiya.

“Detainees were subjected to physical and psychological humiliation.”

The medical chief said no charge had ever been made against him. Israeli forces detained Salmiya during one of a number of raids on Al-Shifa.

The hospital has largely been reduced to rubble by successive raids since Israel launched its assault on Gaza.

Salmiya and the other freed detainees crossed back into Gaza from Israel just east of Khan Yunis, a medical source at the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah told AFP.