The UN Committee against Torture has asked Israel to form an ad hoc investigation committee to look into allegations of torture against the Palestinian population, which have intensified since the beginning of the attack on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
“The Committee expressed its deep concern at reports indicating the State’s de facto policy of systematic and widespread torture and ill-treatment during the reporting period, which has seriously intensified since 7 October 2023,” a statement from the UN agency said.
The document criticizes the lack of a tool in Israeli domestic legislation that classifies the crime of torture, and even highlights that under the so-called “state of necessity defense,” Israeli police and military forces can “exempt their responsibility” when they exercise physical violence during interrogation.
In the same way, the United Nations organization censured the State of Israel for using “special means” as a means of coercion in interrogating unknown prisoners in public.
Likewise, the committee denounced that Israeli policies in the “occupied Palestinian territory” entailed “cruel, inhuman and degrading living conditions” for its citizens, according to testimonies collected in the complaints.
Violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as well as administrative detentions of Palestinian citizens living in this area, has also reached “unprecedented levels.” The United Nations recently reported that more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank at the hands of the army or extremist settlers since the October 7 attacks.
The authorities of the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), on Thursday raised the number of Palestinians martyred as a result of attacks carried out by the Israeli occupation army to more than 350 since October 10, the date of the ceasefire entering into force, in line with the agreement to implement the first phase of the American proposal for the Strip.
In total, the total death toll from the attack launched by Israeli forces since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 is 69,799, while the number of wounded is 170,972.