A prominent Palestinian journalist arrested earlier this month by Israel in the West Bank said he was beaten and filmed naked by prison guards during his nine-day detention.
Maan editor-in-chief Nasser al-Laham was arrested on July 7 on suspicion of incitement and providing services to a terror organization — charges that do not typically lead to a Palestinian’s release from prison after just nine days, if they actually stick.
The Bethlehem-based journalist told Haaretz, in an interview published Monday, that he was questioned over his part-time work as an analyst for the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Mayadeen network, his work at Maan, and posts made from an X account under his name that he denied was his.
Maan editor-in-chief Nasser al-Laham was arrested on July 7 on suspicion of incitement and providing services to a terror organization — charges that do not typically lead to a Palestinian’s release from prison after just nine days, if they actually stick.
The Bethlehem-based journalist told Haaretz, in an interview published Monday, that he was questioned over his part-time work as an analyst for the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Mayadeen network, his work at Maan, and posts made from an X account under his name that he denied was his.
“They didn’t find any incitement in what I wrote in Al-Mayadeen and Maan, so they started searching Twitter [X] and social media,” he told the Hebrew-language news outlet.
He was arrested from his home in Bethlehem at around 2:30 a.m. on July 7, and was interrogated for around eight hours, he told Haaretz. At the end of the interrogation, he was transferred to Ofer Prison in the West Bank.
Laham said he was dragged into the prison handcuffed and with his face covered.
“It really, really hurt,” he recalled. “I almost suffocated and I thought I was going to die.”
“In Ofer, it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not guilty, what matters is that you’re Palestinian,” Laham said, adding that the prison guards would regularly beat the prisoners and curse them out.
In one instance, he said he was stripped naked and blindfolded by guards.
“When I was without clothes, they opened their phones and took videos and said: ‘We’ll publish this in Bethlehem in order to shame you,'” he recalled.
Laham said his fellow prisoners told him that the experience in Ofer Prison — where he slept in a room with 12 men but only eight beds — had improved recently.
"I said to them — this is the situation after an improvement? Oh my God.”
After the initial eight days of his imprisonment were up, police did not even ask to extend Laham’s remand, and he was unconditionally released, raising questions as to why he was arrested and held in the first place.
In his testimony to Haaretz, Laham drew attention to several areas in which he alleged that the Israel Prisons Service was violating the law.
For example, he said, rather than allowing prisoners to spend an hour outdoors each day, as required by law, guards instead allowed them just 10 minutes, once a week.
He said that the food served to prisoners at Ofer was also below the legal minimum, and recalled seeing some prisoners “counting grains of rice and lentils.”
“They gave us three slices of bread, half a spoon of jam, half a spoon of labneh, and half a cup of tahini,” he said.
Responding to the Haaretz report, the Israel Prisons Service claimed in a statement that its guards operate in accordance with the law and that the rights of all prisoners are maintained. If a complaint is submitted, it is fully investigated, IPS said.
The agency has faced longstanding accusations of misconduct against Palestinian inmates, which had intensified since far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir began overseeing the IPS as national security minister in December 2022. The accusations have only gotten worse since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel.
Ben Gvir, who in the past has bragged that prisoners are given “the minimum necessary according to the law, and not a gram more,” has repeatedly railed against so-called luxury items in prison, moving to ban fresh pita being served behind bars, and limiting shower times for inmates.
In the wake of October 7, the ultranationalist minister ordered new restrictions on security prisoners, including overcrowding and the removal of beds — the impact of which was observed by Laham.
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