By The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has discovered thousands of hours of surveillance footage documenting Hamas interrogators systematically torturing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, with recordings showing prisoners chained to ceilings, beaten with canes, and subjected to various forms of abuse.
The footage, apparently captured inadvertently by CCTV cameras inside a Hamas military base in northern Gaza and recovered during an Israeli raid earlier this year, shows incidents dating from 2018 to 2020. A senior Israeli military source told The Mail on Sunday that the footage, discovered in March, required months to analyze.
The videos reveal prisoners hooded with sacks, suspended from ceilings, and beaten on their feet while guards casually observe the abuse. In one sequence, an interrogator reclines in a chair while a prisoner hangs by his arms from the ceiling. Another shows a hooded man in chains barely able to touch the ground with one foot before being choked by his captor.
Hamza Howidy, 27, a former detainee who fled Gaza, described his experience after being arrested for protesting against Hamas. “They would torture you until you broke and say whatever it is they wanted,” he told The Mail on Sunday. “I could hear my fellow protesters scream in the next room.” Howidy, who escaped to Europe via Egypt in September, said his family paid for his release but was warned he would be “a dead man walking” if he returned.
According to human rights organizations and former detainees, Hamas has targeted various groups for torture, including political opponents, suspected Israeli collaborators, gay men, and those accused of adultery. Amnesty International documented similar patterns of abuse in a 44-page report following the 2014 Israel-Hamas war.
A former Israeli intelligence officer identified as Guy C said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, killed by the IDF last month, was “obsessed with finding collaborators and held thousands against their will.” The officer detailed extreme methods of torture, including melting plastic on skin and electrocution.
“Extreme torture has been a fundamental component of Hamas’ governance strategy to ensure they deter people and instil fear in those who speak out,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkharib, a Palestinian fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank.
The footage aligns with previous accounts from Gaza residents who fled, including testimony from LGBTQ+ individuals who escaped to Egypt or Israel. One man, identified only as Abdul, described being repeatedly tortured after Hamas discovered his sexuality, including being beaten on his feet while tied up and forced to swear on the Quran to “not be gay again.”
While the videos cannot be independently verified, they correspond with long-standing documentation by human rights organizations of Hamas’s treatment of civilians under their control in Gaza.
