Cold is Israel’s weapon to torture Palestinian prisoners

Exploiting the extreme cold weather in the West Bank especially at night, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) chains Palestinian prisoners in cells without heating or blankets. The Israeli occupation authorities use the cold weather as another tool of torture in order to force prisoners make confessions.

Tales from behind the bars
The freed Palestinian prisoner, Bilal Jaber, from Ramallah confirmed Israel’s use of cold as a weapon during the Israeli interrogations of the Palestinian prisoners. Jaber said, “During the interrogations, an Israeli officer brought me into a cell. It was empty of anything and I was handcuffed to the back. The temperature in there was very cold, and he left the cell window open for the whole 24 hours to make the cell colder. This caused me a severe flue afterwards.”

Basel Mahmoud, a newly freed prisoner, from Balata refugee camp near Nablus, indicated that the cells’ coldness is incomparable. Outside the prison, as he referred, a person can find a heating device or any other source of heat to make himself warm, while in the prison there is no refuge except Allah and shrinking oneself together to feel the heat of his body at least for seconds and to stop his helpless teeth chattering.

Alaa Al-Hasan, a boy from Jerusalem, remembered how the Israeli soldiers arrested him and kept him in solitary confinement for 5 hours. He was charged with throwing a stone at a settler. He said, “It is like time stops in the cell. You never know it is day or night— you do not know what time it is; you do not hear the call for prayer; you only have a dim light in the ceiling and the sounds of chains and the knocking on the cells’ gates. It is extremely cold in there.”

“The interrogator came and told me, ‘you will stay in this cold cell until you confess.’ I told him I did nothing to punish me with this extreme cold and I asked for blankets but he refused”, he added more

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