Representatives of the controversial US government agency USAID have held regular meetings with counterparts at a prison camp where Israeli officials have declared the right to torture and rape Palestinian detainees, it was revealed today.
“According to three officials with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Israel’s humanitarian relief hub began operating at the desert military base Sde Teiman on 29 July with a regular US presence,” reported the British newspaper The Guardian.
“Sde Teiman was set up as a temporary holding facility for detainees from Gaza after last year’s 7 October attack… Human rights groups and released detainees say the thousands of Palestinians who have been through the facility have been subjected to severe abuse and torture.”
The prison camp played a central role in a controversy earlier this year over the attempted criminal prosecution of ten Israeli soldiers implicated in the gang rape of a Palestinian detainee. Video verified by Western media outlets showed the group of guards selecting the man from a group of prisoners lying bound on the floor before slamming him against a wall where he was sexually assaulted.
The attack was reportedly so severe that the detainee was unable to walk afterwards.
The public rallied to the Israeli soldiers’ defense, carrying out riots and demonstrations where protesters and television personalities defended the “right to rape” Palestinian prisoners. The cause was also championed by lawmakers in the apartheid country’s parliament. Ultimately the charges against the prison guards were dropped.
Sde Teiman has been the site of numerous other alleged incidents of torture before and since, including electrocution, burning, beatings, sexual humiliation and the denial of food, water, healthcare and sleep. One Israeli doctor claimed amputations of limbs take place “routinely” as prisoners remain handcuffed for extended periods of time. At least 35 prisoners have died from their treatment at the facility, according to a report by The New York Times in May.
USAID is a US government body that operates under the pretense of providing humanitarian and developmental aid to foreign countries, but the agency has been frequently implicated in acts of political subversion across the globe. Alleged US attempts to improve the humanitarian situation in nearby Gaza have apparently amounted to little as hunger remains rampant amid an ongoing Israeli siege of the territory.
“The situation [in Sde Teiman] is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo,” said lawyer Khaled Mahajneh in +972 Magazine.
The Israeli media outlet has revealed numerous scandals within the Israel Defense Forces, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify suspected Palestinian combatants and kill them at home along with their family members.
Low level USAID employees have repeatedly protested the agency’s failure to more effectively pressure the Israeli government on human rights concerns, to no avail.
“USAID staff have coordinated dissent memos on private group chats, held vigils for slain aid workers outside of the Washington office, and confronted USAID leadership in meetings,” The Guardian reported. “Seventy-six staffers sent a letter in March to the leadership of the agency’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security criticizing USAID ‘silence on the suffering of Gaza.’”
The United States is known for frequently advocating the use of torture around the globe. During the 1960s and 70s the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) distributed “torture manuals” to allied dictatorships in Latin America as part of a US-backed campaign of state terror known as “Operation Condor.”
The US recalled the manuals in the 1990s, but copies were retained by officials including David Addington and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who would go on to mandate the use of torture during the so-called War on Terror. Cheney and other Bush administration officials have been forced to cancel planned trips to Europe in the years since as countries indicate they could be subject to arrest in line with obligations under international law.