Military Police raid IDF detention facility, 9 held, over ‘serious abuse of a detainee’
Heated argument erupts at Sde Teiman, as investigators take nine suspects in for questioning after terror suspect was brought to hospital with signs of sexual abuse
Military Police investigators raided a detention facility in southern Israel on Monday to arrest soldiers suspected of the serious sexual abuse of a Palestinian terror detainee, causing an outcry among far-right politicians.
A heated argument erupted between soldiers and the Military Police investigators at the Sde Teiman military base, footage showed.
The Military Police officers sought to detain ten soldiers who were guarding arrested terrorists from the Gaza Strip, as part of an investigation into an incident of suspected “serious abuse of a detainee,” the Israel Defense Forces said.
Nine suspects were taken for questioning by the Military Police following the argument at the base, the IDF said. The 10th suspect was not immediately detained.
The IDF said that the Military Police investigation into suspected serious abuse was opened per the orders of the Military Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi.
The investigation was launched after a detained terror suspect was brought from the base to a hospital with signs of serious abuse, including to his anus.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir condemned the soldiers’ arrests, and other members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party announced that they were heading to the facility in southern Israel to protest the soldiers’ detention.
“The spectacle of Military Police officers coming to arrest our best heroes at Sde Teiman is nothing less than shameful,” said Ben Gvir, whose ministry controls the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service (IPS).
Far-right politicians later urged supporters to come and protest at the detention facility to which the soldiers had been taken.
A number of far-right lawmakers and activists, including MK Zvi Succot of the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionist party, broke into the base amid their angry protest outside.
In a video filmed at the base, Sukkot declared that “we cannot investigate the soldiers until we investigate those who failed” to prevent October 7. Taking up a megaphone, he told protesters: “We have no other army, this is an important demonstration, let’s go outside and not fight with the soldiers.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich railed against the arrests of the soldiers, saying in a video message that “IDF soldiers deserve respect” and must not be treated as “criminals.” Smotrich called on Tomer-Yerushalmi to “take your hands off our heroic warriors.”
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein announced amid the outcry that he will hold an urgent hearing on Tuesday to discuss the situation.
“I will not lend a hand to scenes like the one seen today at the base in Sde Teiman,” Edelstein said. “A situation in which masked military policemen raid an IDF base is not acceptable to me, and I will not allow it to happen again. Our soldiers are not criminals and this contemptible pursuit of our soldiers is unacceptable to me.”
The Palestinian detainee who was allegedly the subject of the abuse was arrested by the IDF in the Gaza Strip several weeks ago.
According to an Army Radio report, the abuse itself took place some three weeks ago at Sde Teiman, and the terror suspect was found at the military base in critical condition and taken to a hospital for treatment and surgery. He is now no longer in life-threatening condition.
A petition to the High Court of Justice by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has urged it to order the state to close the Sde Teiman after reports emerged in recent months of abuse at the facility.
The reports alleged widespread abuse of prisoners, including extreme use of physical restraints, beatings, neglect of medical problems, arbitrary punishments and more.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the High Court that Sde Teiman should only be used for short-term detention and questioning of Palestinian security detainees caught in Gaza, a stance that Ben Gvir strongly opposes.
Terror operatives and other suspects are generally initially held in detention facilities at the IDF’s Sde Teiman, Anatot and Ofer bases, before being handed over to the IPS.
The detainees are legally allowed to be held for 45 days before they must be either released or moved into the care of the IPS.
Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, Sde Teiman has been used to hold more than 1,000 detainees from Gaza who were suspected of terrorist activity. The vast majority were suspected of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
The IDF announced in May that it was investigating reports of abuse and torture of the detainees being held in Sde Teiman following multiple reports that the prisoners were being severely mistreated.
Tomer-Yerushalmi, the military advocate general, said that as of the end of May, the military had opened 70 investigations that it was treating “very seriously.”
Following the abuse and torture allegations and the ACRI’s petition to the High Court, the state announced that the IDF would phase out the use of Sde Teiman, and prisoner transfers subsequently began immediately.
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