WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Security cameras have documented the assault on 55 shackled Palestinian prisoners, which was reportedly carried out on 24 March 2019.
The footage spread on social media shows several Zionist guards throwing prisoners, one by one, to the floor, while swarming around them, kicking, punching and beating them with batons.
Haaretz said that Palestinian prisoners’ hands were tied behind their backs, and they were commanded not to move or speak, and left tied on the ground for hours in a yard opposite a row of prisoners’ tents.
An official, speaking anonymously, told Haaretz that it was “one of the most violent incidents in Israeli prisons”.
At least 10 Zionist prison guards are seen assaulting the Palestinian prisoners, yet only four were investigated by Lahav 433, a security agency that tackles serious crime and corruption.
Lahav 433 has now closed its investigation citing the pretext of “unidentified criminal”, and has not filed charges against anyone over the incident.
No confrontations between prisoners and jailers can be seen on the footage, according to the daily, noting that 15 Palestinian prisoners were transferred to Soroka hospital for treatment after the incident. Two of the injured Palestinian inmates were in serious condition.
Amir Salloum, a 26-year-old Palestinian from Shufaat neighborhood in the Israeli-occupied East al-Quds, told Haaretz that while he was waiting to be transferred from Section 4 to 3, he heard someone shouting “stabbing, stabbing”.
“A few minutes later, prison guards from the Metzada unit came and started firing metal bullets at us. We fled to the outskirts of the section,” he added.
Salloum said another special unit joined forces with Metzada.
“They tied us up and no one resisted that. Then they started beating us with batons. They threw us in the middle of the section as if we were nothing, and they beat us even though we weren’t able to defend ourselves. They broke my jaw, my teeth and my nose,” Salloum said.