U.S. and Israeli officials have been holding daily meetings at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base that hosts a notorious prison, which has been used by the regime to subject Palestinians to horrific instances of torture, a report shows.
The Guardian published the report on Monday, saying that “two USAid (US Agency for International Development) officials travel to Sde Teiman daily” for meetings with Israeli and United Nations officials.
The facility, which lies in the central part of the occupied Palestinian territories in Negev Desert, has been hosting such meetings since July 29, the daily added.
Sources, who spoke to the paper, said the fact that the center had started to host the meetings has been a closely guarded secret, and that USAid documents and internal correspondence rather list the location of the meetings as the nearby city of Be’er Sheva.
The prison was set up following the launch of the regime’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip on October 7 last year. Ever since, it has locked up some 4,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have been subjected to acts of torture, including rape, beatings, electrocutions, and force feedings.
Almost 70 Palestinians, many of them unidentified, have been tortured to death by the Israeli regime in its prisons since October 2023 amid the genocidal war on Gaza.
In August, an Israeli military doctor presented a horrendous testimony on the appalling and inhumane conditions of sick Palestinian prisoners at the detention center.
An Israeli military doctor has presented a horrendous testimony on the appalling and fairly inhumane conditions of sick Palestinian prisoners being held at a detention center in Israel.
He said he found nearly 20 patients in one tent shackled to old steel beds and blindfolded all the time when he stepped into the center, noting that many of the detainees had already undergone major surgeries or had suffered gunshot wounds.
The doctor also said torture at Sde Teiman included detaining prisoners naked and blindfolded and preventing them from speaking or moving their limbs for long periods that amount to a month, prompting their limbs to be “routinely” amputated as a result of prolonged handcuffing.
“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo,” said Khaled Mahajneh, a lawyer with the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
