Israeli military drops charges against soldiers accused of abusing Palestinian detainee

Israel's most senior military lawyer has said all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee from Gaza have been dropped.

The military said the indictments were withdrawn in part due to "exceptional circumstances that negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right for a fair trial of the defendants".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision.

But the move was condemned by human rights activists, who say abuse of Palestinians is systematic in Israeli jails and rarely investigated properly.

Warning: this story contains a description of alleged sexual abuse

A military prison was set up at Sde Teiman after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 to hold Palestinians detained during the ensuing war in Gaza.

In August 2024, an Israeli TV channel broadcast leaked CCTV video that allegedly showed soldiers serving as guards at the prison abusing a detainees.

In the footage, a group of guards can be seen pushing the detainee against a wall before shielding him from view with their riot shields.

Five guards were later accused of "acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee's bottom with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee's rectum", according to a statement from the military at the time. The detainee suffered "cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an inner rectal tear".

It later emerged the CCTV video had been leaked by the then-Israeli Military Advocate General, Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, leading to her resignation and arrest.

In her resignation letter, Tomer-Yerushalmi said she had approved the leak "in an attempt to counter false propaganda against the army's law enforcement authorities" - a reference to claims from some right-wing politicians that the allegations were fabricated.

Her replacement, Maj Gen Itai Ofir, announced on Thursday that all charges against the five guards had been dropped "in light of significant developments".

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the decision was based in part on the various circumstances, including the complexity of the evidence; the "extremely exceptional and unprecedented circumstances due to conduct by certain senior officials in the Military Advocate General's Corps"; difficulty in transferring investigative material from the police; and the fact that the detainee had been released and allowed to return to Gaza in October.

The Chief of the General Staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, had instructed IDF personnel to "draw lessons and to take all the requested steps to prevent similar cases", it added.

Prime Minister Netanyahu hailed the end of what he called the "blood libel".

"The State of Israel must hunt down its enemies - not its heroic fighters," he said.

Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a non-governmental organisation, accused the military of a whitewash.

"Israel's military advocate general just gave his soldiers license to rape - so long as the victim is Palestinian," she told the Associated Press.

She said the decision was "the latest in a long line of actions that whitewash abuses against detainees whose frequency and severity have worsened" since 7 October 2023.

The United Nations Committee against Torture said last November that it was deeply concerned about reports indicating "a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture and ill treatment" of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails. It said the allegations had "gravely intensified" after 7 October 2023.

Israel's government has rejected accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees, and insisted that it is fully committed to international legal standards.