“This is how I was Tortured and Interrogated for My Journalistic Work”

Diaa Khalil Ahmed al-Kahlout (42), resident of al-Karamah neighborhood in Jabalia and married with 5 children. al-Kahlout is the Director and Reporter of the New Arab News Website in the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, 07 October 2023, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched their aggression on the Gaza Strip and targeted it with heavy airstrikes destroying houses and inflecting deaths and injuries among civilians following the events of 7 October. Thus, with the beginning of the Israeli aggression, I have closely followed the developments on the ground as part of my journalistic work as the Director and Reporter of the New Arab News Website in the Gaza Strip.

Later, IOF sent voice and text messages on home and mobile phones via the Palestine Telecommunications (Paltel) and Palestine Cellular Communications operators “Jawwal and Ooredoo” urging the residents of several neighborhoods in Gaza city and Northern Gaza to evacuate, including al-Karamah neighborhood in northwestern Gaza City where I live. I had to evacuate my home after IOF’s warplanes bombed and destroyed nearby houses, inflicting casualties, and due to the Israeli threats to bomb all the houses in the neighborhood.

After I evacuated with my wife and 5 children, I headed to my family house in Beit Lahia Housing Project, north of the Gaza Strip, where I stayed until Thursday 7 December 2023. Following IOF’s ground invasion into the northwestern Gaza Strip, the Israeli tanks and other vehicles arrived at Beit Lahia housing project. At approximately 09:00 on Thursday, 07 December 2023, when I was at my family house, we heard the Israeli soldiers screaming via loudspeakers ordering the residents to get out of their houses. We were around 40 persons (many families), mostly children, women and elderlies, who got out of the house.

The soldiers then ordered women, elderlies and children under 18, to head to Kamal ‘Odwan Hospital in Beit Lahia Housing Project while I stayed on the street with my brothers, Taher (40) and Mohammed (36) along with 9 of our brothers-in-law and neighbors. The soldiers then ordered us to take off our clothes except the underwear and forced us to sit on the ground. Afterwards, the soldiers raided our house and completely burned it along with other nearby houses before leaving the area.

Half an hour later, the soldiers ordered us to walk toward the market street where we found another group of Palestinians detained by the Israeli soldiers. We were around 200 people and were forced to sit on our knees and take off our shirts and stay in in our underwear despite the very cold weather. The soldiers insulted us and then brought weapons (Kalashnikovs and projectiles) putting them in front of some of us to take photos of them.

We were then handcuffed with plastic zip-ties behind our backs and blindfolded. The soldiers brought several trucks and forced us to get into them with 50 detainees in each truck. While driving for an hour, the soldiers were shooting above our heads and recording videos with their phones mocking and insulting us. The trucks then stopped, I think in a place near Zikim training base, northwestern Beit Lahia.

The soldiers forced us to get off the trucks nearly at sunset. They took photos of us and verified our ID cards via eye print biometrics. We could hear the bulldozers roaring and the place was fully lightened. All that time, the soldiers did not provide us food or water and the weather was very cold. Our hearts were filled with fear thinking that the soldiers would bury us here alive or after shooting us dead. Few hours later, it turned out that the soldiers were dividing the detainees before setting some of them free and referring the rest to interrogation.

kneeling on the sand, I was interrogated by an Israeli military intelligence investigator calling himself “Captain Abu Ali”. He was standing right in front of me, he questioned me about my work and I told him I as a journalist in the New Arab news website. The investigator then searched in a device linked to the internet about my data and work, so he found a report written by me on Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website back in 2017 about IOF’s commonly known “Sayeret Matkal” unit when one of its officers was discovered and killed by the Palestinian resistance groups in Bani Suhailah village, east of Khan Younis. They also found other reports that I previously wrote when I used to work with Al-Jazeera website about Hamas and its historical slogans and other reports on As-Safeer Lebanese website. The investigator noticed how exhausted I was and that the ties were hurting me and the fold was too tight on my eyes. I asked him to loosen the ties and fold but he refused and pushed me to the ground, so the sand got into my mouth.

After questioning me for 20 minutes, the soldiers took me to where they gathered the detainees and mocked me and my journalistic work. One of them talked to me in English and then closed my mouth with a tape taking me and the rest of detainees with ours hands tied behind our backs and blindfolded to a higher place, where there were trucks parked. They were insulting and beating us. They forced us into the trucks and threw light blankets on us, but the weather was very cold. The trucked moved for a few minutes. I think they entered nearby Zikim Base. I was separated from my brothers, Taher and Mohammed, and the soldiers then forced us out of the trucks. We walked barefoot on concrete stones and then one of the soldiers hit my head with a solid object for looking back. Around 10 minutes later, busses arrived and we got into them. While on the bus, I coughed, so one of the soldiers punched me several times. All the way during the 2-hour journey on the bus, I was beaten up several times for not looking down while seated.

At around 23:00, we arrived at an unknown place where I was examined by a doctor, who asked me If I had any chronic diseases (hypertension or diabetes). I told him that I suffered from slipped disks in the back. However, he did not give me any medicine. After a routine checkup, the soldiers gave me number (059889) and a grey pajama and forced me into a cell, which was an asbestos-roofed barrack with asphalt floor. I was being punched by the soldiers all the time while I was taken to the cell. When I entered the cell, a Palestinian detainee gave me a very thin mattress and blanket where I slept for hours. The cell was surrounded by barbed wires as if it was a cage and I noticed other cells with 100 detainees in each. All of them had their hands tied with steel cuffs in front as well as their feet and were all blindfolded not allowed to speak to each other.

For 25 consecutive days, we were forced to stay in the kneeling position from approximately 4:00 am to 11:00 pm and they counted us several times. We were given very little food, some toast slices, jam, creamy cheese, tuna and little water, and we were only allowed once a day to go the bathroom. Being forced to sit on my knees for a long time has caused me skin irritations and cysts in my thighs and the soldiers refused to provide me with any medical treatment.

We were counting days from the sunrises and sunsets. After 9 days in prison, I was interrogated by an investigator wearing a military uniform about the events of 7 October and If I thought about going to the Israeli towns on that day. He also asked me about persons who were killed that day and about Hamas leaders in Beit Lahia housing project. I told him that I do not live in Beit Lahia and I know nothing about the Hamas leaders there. They then told me that I commented on a Facebook post for a person killed from Lubbad family and I said that he was one of my family’s neighbors and I knew nothing about where or how he was killed. I was interrogated for 20 minutes in an open area while I was standing and the interrogator was sitting on a chair under an umbrella protecting him from the sun heat.

Few days later, I was interrogated again for around 30 minutes by an investigator wearing a military uniform. He asked me about my journalistic work with Al-Jazeera Net between 2007 and 2014 and in Al-Araby Al Jadeed website, where I still work, as well as my press sources. They also asked me about the leaders I contact and I gave him a name as he was the only one answering my calls.

On the 25^th day of my arrest, I was taken in a military vehicle that drove around 15 minutes and then stopped. The soldiers forced me out of the vehicle and then walked me while I was tied and blindfolded and threw me on the ground in a place I did not know. I sat on my knees on concrete stones for 10 minutes, and then the soldiers brought me into a room and ordered me to take off all my clothes. One of them gave me a diaper so I put it on and then wore my clothes thinking they were preparing me for interrogation with an investigator from the Shin Bet. The soldiers put me in the corner of a corridor and tied my feet and hands behind my back with iron handcuffs. The soldiers then hung me in the “shabeh” position with the sun above my head. Shabeh is a position whereby a person is hung from the ceiling and his toes become off the ground.

There were other detainees next to me hung in the shabeh position as well, and I could identify that one of them was my relative (Mohsen al-Kahlout). I was left hanging the shabeh position for six hours, causing me terrible pain, especially in the shoulders and back since I suffer from herniated disk. One of the detainees who was also hunged in the Shabeh position fell on the ground. The soldiers untied him and gave him some water. I was then taken with him along with another detainee, whom I later knew was Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, Director of Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, to a new cell.

In the new cell, the soldiers removed the iron cuffs off my hands and feet and then tied my hands with plastic ties instead. I saw my relative ‘Alaa al-Kahlout and Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, a surgeon in the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip. We were ill-treated in that cell under the pretext of speaking in a loud voice. We had an Israeli special unit raiding the cell and ordering the detainees to lie down on their stomachs and insulting us. They called the detainees, who were accused of causing disturbances, by their numbers and the soldiers transferred them to another cell.

I stayed in that cell for eight days during which the disk pain increased particularly in the shoulders and back with numbness in the feet. One time I fell on the ground during the detainees count, so Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, who was detained with us, approached me and asked the soldiers to take me to the clinic. I was taken on a stretcher and was examined by the clinic’s doctor, who gave me a pill (muscle relaxant) that reduced the pain a little. Late at night, the soldiers made a barbecue feast for themselves during which they swore at the detainees and forced some of them to chant “long live Israel.”

On the 33^rd day of my arrest, I was taken with 120 other detainees from the place we were detained in to a bus. Among the detainees, there was an old Palestinian man with Alzheimer from Muslam family and I do not know how the Israeli soldiers had arrested him in that condition. While in the bus, I was beaten by a female soldier several times for not looking down and not sitting still on the chair. Around 3 hours later, the bus stopped and the soldiers released us at Kerem Shalom Crossing, southeast of Rafah, and ordered us to run to the Palestinian side. Among us, there was a woman who refused to talk to any of us and we did not know her name.

When we arrived at the Palestinian side, an International UNRWA female officer received us and offered us food and beverages. I sat with employees from the ICRC and told them about my detention conditions. I knew from them that it was Tuesday, 09 January 2024. I made several calls to check on my family and learnt that the Israeli warplanes had bombed my house. I also knew that my father-in-law, Rafiq al-Khalout, was killed while my father and my wife were injured when IOF bombed a relative’s house in Beit Lahia housing project. After leaving the tent toward Rafah Crossing, we met a Palestinian police officer who wrote down our names and we left to Rafah City in an UNRWA vehicle. I am staying now in the journalists’ tent near the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah.