WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s jailers would wrap Palestinian prisoners in shrouds and bury them alive. 
As they began to suffocate, just before death took hold, a small amount of air was allowed in to keep them alive, only for the process to be repeated moments later.
This is one of many accounts of torture inflicted on Palestinian detainees by the Zionist regime’s authorities.
Following the recent Hamas-Israel prisoner exchange, hundreds of detainees have been released, and similar harrowing testimonies have emerged.
Middle East Eye spoke to some of the recently freed prisoners in Gaza, who described how Palestinians were “tortured to death” in Israeli prisons.
Mahmoud Ismail Abukhater, 41, was at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza when an Israeli military quadcopter hovered overhead, broadcasting a voice ordering “people of the neighborhood to surrender,” on October 20, 2024. 
“They fired bullets at houses and balconies and bombed homes nearby as they broadcast those messages to terrorize us. That’s when they detained us,” he recalled.
Abukhater said the torture began the moment they were detained and continued until the very last moment before their release.
“They treated us like animals, not humans,” he said.
Before being transferred to prison, the prisoners were taken to a place that resembled a cattle farm in Gaza, he explained. 
There, they were forced to endure the freezing night, wearing only boxers and the thin white clothes they were given.
“Our hands and feet were shackled, and they struck us with frozen water bottles and bottles filled with olives,” he added.
“There, the soldiers urinated in a container and then poured it over our faces and bodies.”
Abukhater was then taken to the notorious Sde Teiman military detention camp, where he was kept handcuffed for nearly two months.
“It’s a torture camp for men,” he said. 
“They forced us to sit from dawn until midnight without moving, and we were only allowed to go to the toilet with permission and with our hands shackled. Sometimes the officer allowed it, other times he didn’t, and many detainees ended up urinating on themselves,” he continued.
Despite being denied access to toilets and having their hygiene restricted, soldiers forced prisoners to shower every other day in freezing water during December and January, in spite of the bitter cold.
If they discovered someone hadn’t bathed, they would punish and torture them immediately.
However, according to him, one of the most harrowing torture methods at Sde Teiman involved deceiving prisoners into believing they were being drowned or suffocated to death.
“They would place a detainee in a shroud connected to a hose with a small camera inside, bury him in a pit, and then monitor him through the camera,” he explained.
As soon as he was on the verge of complete suffocation, believing he was about to die, the guards would allow in a small amount of air to keep him alive.” 
Abukhater recalled that one of the most haunting moments in prison was witnessing the torture to death of Musaab Haniyeh, the nephew of Ismail Haniyeh, the former political leader of Hamas.