Israeli hostage reports torture and sexual attack during detention in Gaza | Israel

Amit Soussana, who was held hostage in Gaza for 55 days between October and November, told the US daily The New York Times how she was sexually attacked by a man responsible for her and how she was later subjected to torture. She was the first woman to publicly report a sexual assault against herself.

The diary confirmed that the hostage’s account coincided with what she told a gynecologist and a social worker less than 24 hours after her release.

Amit Soussana described how she was detained in around a dozen locations, including private homes, an office and a tunnel, alone or with other people also being held hostage.

The 40-year-old lawyer was taken from kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, where he lived, after having locked himself in the room that was also the shelter of the house. But at one point the door was broken down and he saw around ten armed men and part of the house on fire.

They tried to take her and take her to the Gaza Strip, dragging her. Part of what happened was seen in a widely shared video after the attack: images from security cameras at a photovoltaic park showed a group of men trying to take Soussana to Gaza, throwing her several times to the ground while she struggled (in one of the , manages to make the man carrying her lose his balance and fall).

Soussana now said that not only did she not want to be taken without resistance, but she believed that at any moment “someone would appear” to save her.

The attacks she suffered on the way to Gaza – which lasted around an hour – immediately left her with injuries and pain. The hospital report based on observation after release noted “fractures to the right orbital bone, cheekbone, knee and nose”, as well as severe bruising to the knee and back, with the majority of injuries dating back to the time. of the kidnapping.

When she crossed over to the Gaza Strip, she was put in a car, with a cloth covering her head, and driven until she ended up in a private house.

She was taken to a child’s room, where she was chained around her ankle. The man guarding her offered her massages and asked her about her sex life. Sometimes he would sit on the bed with her, lift her nightgown and touch her.

She asked persistent questions about her period. After she got her period, the guard repeated to tell her when the bleeding stopped – and on the day she had to tell him it had stopped (days later), he took her to take a shower, and then threatened her with a pistol , attacked her and, keeping the gun pointed, forced her to carry out a sexual act (at Soussana’s request, the newspaper does not say what it was, adding that this is indicated in the reports when she was released).

The guard seemed to show remorse. After leaving her alone, when he came back he said: “I’m bad, I’m bad, please don’t tell Israel.” That day, he repeatedly offered her food (normally she ate one meal a day), which she refused.

“You can’t look at him – but you have to: he’s the one who protects you, he’s your guard.” And “at any moment it could happen again”, he told the New York Times.

Soussana spent a total of two and a half weeks in that house. After a major bombardment, it was changed location (I think this was when the land incursion began, on October 27th).

After being taken away by a car with the guard sitting with her in the back seat and a gun pointed, she was handed over to another man, in another house. She was relieved on the one hand, but scared.

They took her to a room where two young women were playing cards, and an older man and woman. Soussana was dressed in traditional Gaza clothing. “We looked at each other for half a minute,” she recalled. Soussana asked: “Are you Israelites?” and they asked back: “You Are you an Israeli?”

“Absolute horror”

It was in that house that she was tortured, although she cannot explain why – the men asked her for information that she did not have. They attacked her with gun butts, tied her up, put tape over her mouth and nose, handcuffed her and suspended her “like a chicken” on a pole placed between two sofas (the pain made her think she was going to dislocate her legs). wrists), hit him on the soles of his feet, used a piercing object as if they were going to poke his eye, stopping when the aggression seemed inevitable.

The other hostages watched the attacks, which lasted around 45 minutes, he said. One of the young women was so scared that she asked her if she had any last message she wanted to give her family.

The group of hostages was still separated – Amit Soussana stayed with the older couple – and was at one point in the tunnels, where the air was thin, he described. In total, he was in about ten different places.

When she was released, she pretended to have been treated well for fear of jeopardizing her release if she did not do so, she further reported.

Amit Soussana had, until this week, spoken only in general terms about what had happened (“I was in emotional and physical terror for the entire 55 days I was detained, feeling that every moment could be my last,” he had said about two months, when he visited his home, mentioned by the Times of Israel).

O New York Times contacted Hamas about the description. A spokesperson for the movement, Basem Naim, said it was essential to have an investigation, but “under the current circumstances” this was impossible; In any case, he considered that the details given “make it difficult to believe the story, unless it was conceived by some security agents”.

Soussana was one of the people heard by the United Nations commission that made a report on sexual crimes on the side of Hamas and Israel, and who said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that there was sexual violence committed during the October 7 attack and that there is “clear and convincing information” about sexual violence against hostages and “reasonable grounds for saying that this violence may be ongoing”.

The report also spoke of sexual violence against Palestinian women detained by Israeli forces.

Amit Soussana told New York Times who had decided to speak now to draw attention to the conditions the hostages are in, after the failure of negotiations for a ceasefire and their release.