DaysofPal – The Health Ministry of Gaza said that at least 135 mutilated Palestinian bodies that were brought back to the territory were linked to Israel’s Sde Teiman detention camp, a military installation already notorious for extrajudicial killings, torture, and sexual assault.
The remains were kept at the desert base in the Negev, where Palestinian detainees have been kept in cages, blindfolded, handcuffed, and shackled to hospital beds, according to Hebrew-language documents discovered inside the body bags.
Health officials and forensic doctors who examined the bodies described signs of systematic torture and execution, including gunshots fired at point-blank range, crushed skulls, severed limbs, and bodies showing evidence of hanging, binding, and mutilation.
“These are not the remains of people who died in battle,” said one doctor in Khan Younis. “These are the bodies of people who were executed.”
Horror Inside Sde Teiman
For months, whistleblowers and former detainees have described the horrors of Sde Teiman, where Palestinians were stripped naked, beaten, attacked by dogs, and denied food or medical care. Many were reportedly forced to wear diapers and kept blindfolded for days.
Some detainees, they said, were sexually assaulted, while others had limbs amputated after infections spread from injuries caused by tight handcuffs.
Shadi Abu Sido, a journalist from Gaza working for Palestine Today TV, was one of those detained. Arrested at Al-Shifa Hospital on March 18, 2024, he spent nearly 100 days in Sde Teiman after being held elsewhere.
“They stripped me naked for ten hours in the cold,” Abu Sido said in a video testimony after his release. “I was handcuffed and blindfolded the entire time. Many detainees died; others lost their minds.
They brought dogs that urinated on us. When I asked why I was arrested, one soldier said, ‘We killed all the journalists. They died once. But we brought you here so you will die hundreds of times.’”
His testimony aligns with multiple reports by rights groups and Israeli medical staff who worked at the base and later came forward anonymously.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHR) said the condition of the returned bodies “corroborates years of evidence of systematic torture and killings inside Israeli detention facilities.”
The organization called for an independent international investigation, stressing that the pattern of abuse documented in Gaza’s returned bodies cannot be dismissed as isolated incidents.
“The physical evidence is undeniable,” PHR stated. “These were acts of torture, humiliation, and deliberate cruelty.”
Sde Teiman, originally used as a military base and field hospital, has become a dual site, part detention camp, part morgue, where bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza are stored alongside the living detainees held in inhumane conditions.
Human rights advocates now demand to know how many of the returned martyrs were killed inside the facility itself.
Silence and Denial
Despite mounting evidence, the Israeli military has refused to comment on the allegations or clarify the origin of the bodies. Officials maintain that detainees are treated “appropriately” under Israeli law.
Yet reports gathered by the United Nations indicate that at least 75 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023, many under circumstances consistent with torture, medical neglect, and extrajudicial execution.
International observers say the case of Sde Teiman may represent the most extensive and documented example yet of institutionalized abuse under Israeli detention policy.
The discovery of the mutilated bodies and the testimonies from survivors expose a pattern of systematic, state-sanctioned violence that blurs the line between imprisonment and execution.
As Gaza’s morgues fill with bodies marked by torture, and Israel continues to block independent access to detention sites, families across the Strip are left to bury their loved ones without knowing how or where they were killed.
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