Palestinian detainees have spoken of their shock at returning to a Gaza unrecognizable from the one from which they were taken, as some are freed from Israeli detention with stories of brutal treatment.
Gaza is now gone, Shadi Abu Sido, 35, shouted to the cameras as he emerged from a bus in the southern city of Khan Younis on Monday. “It’s like a scene from ‘Judgment Day,’” he said of the destruction.
Later, he was reunited with his wife and children, who he said his captors had falsely told him had died.
Abu Sido is among 1,718 Palestinian detainees released in exchange for Israeli hostages, in addition to 250 security prisoners convicted of serious crimes including murder. The detainees, taken captive since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, had faced no charges. All 20 surviving Israeli hostages held in Gaza were released under the exchange.
Abu Sido, a cameraman for a Lebanon-based TV station who was arrested in March 2024 while filming at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, told NBC News over the phone that he was stripped naked, handcuffed and had his rib broken when he was first arrested 19 months ago. In prison, he says he was left handcuffed and blindfolded for weeks.
“No food, no bathroom, no talking, no lifting your head,” he said. Those who disobeyed were ” hung on the wall and beaten,” he added.
Abu Sido said soldiers picked on him because of his job, with one interrogator hitting him repeatedly in his eye so that he would lose his ability to operate a camera. He said he now needs specialist treatment that he worries won’t be available in Gaza.
Moureen Kaki, a Palestinian American aid worker from the medical nongovernmental organization Glia, was at Nasser Hospital on Monday as the released detainees arrived for health checks, most appearing gaunt, limping and shrunken.
“Everybody was affected by scabies,” she said in a video call on Tuesday evening. “It wasn’t just one person that shared the same story of torture, of being withheld food, of being forced to drink toilet water since the announcement of the ceasefire. It was every single person that we talked to that had the same stories. It was truly horrifying.”
She said that three people who had been imprisoned for months arrived at the hospital with fresh gunshot wounds that appeared to have “happened within the span of the last three weeks.”
Israel also returned the bodies of 120 detainees. On Thursday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza posted photos of what it said were bodies returned showing signs of torture and with various toes and fingers missing.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment over the allegations of torture and abuse. In a separate case in February, five Israeli reservists were charged over the beating and stabbing of a detainee, accused in an indictment of breaking the man’s ribs, puncturing his lung and tearing his rectum.
Dozens of detainees released on Monday were health care workers. Among them was Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al-Awda Hospital, detained during a December 2023 raid when he ignored IDF warnings to leave, choosing instead to stay with his patients.
Muhanna, after nearly two years in detention, addressed a crowd that gathered to welcome him back to the hospital.
“They directly targeted medical staff,” he said. “But we will never leave our hospitals.”
The Israeli military has previously defended strikes at hospitals, repeatedly saying medical facilities in Gaza were being used as operating bases for Hamas.
According to the monitoring group Healthcare Workers Watch, there are at least 115 health care workers from Gaza among the thousands of Palestinians still in Israeli detention.
They include a prominent pediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who, according to his family, had been approved for release. On Thursday, an Israeli court extended Abu Safiya’s detention by another six months.
