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Israel Returns Palestinian Prisoners' Bodies With 'Signs of Torture, Mutilation, and Execution'
An unknown number of Palestinians abducted by Israel died or were killed while in custody; living former prisoners have described horrific and sometimes deadly torture.
Oct 16, 2025
Israel on Wednesday returned the bodies of dozens of Palestinians abducted during the Gaza genocide showing "signs of torture, mutilation, and execution," as one US-based news site reported—a description consistent with the testimonies of former prisoners held by the Israeli forces over the past two years.
So far, Israel has returned 90 bodies, with more expected to be handed over soon, as part ofo the ceasefire agreement reached with Hamas last week. The Gaza Health Ministry's forensic team said that some of the bodies were blindfolded and bound, and bore signs of torture similar to those seen on many of the living Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel on Monday.
Some of the dead prisoners appeared to be victims of field executions—a war crime Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have allegedly committed against men, women, and children alike.
Furthermore, Israel's obliteration of Gaza's healthcare and medical infrastructure is making it difficult for Palestinian forensic personnel to identify the bodies returned by Israel, which are in various states of decomposition.
"The horrific scenes visible on the bodies of the martyrs returned by the occupation, bearing marks of torture, abuse, and field executions, clearly reveal the criminal and fascist nature of the occupation army and the moral and human decadence this entity has reached," Hamas said in a statement.
"We call upon international rights groups, foremost among them the [United Nations] and [its] Human Rights Council, to document these atrocious crimes, open an urgent and comprehensive investigation into them, and bring the occupation leaders to trial before relevant international courts, as they are responsible for committing unprecedented crimes against humanity in our modern history," the statement added.
🟢 New Press Statement - Hamas:—The horrific scenes visible on the bodies of the martyrs returned by the occupation, bearing marks of torture, abuse, and field executions, clearly reveal the criminal and fascist nature of the occupation army and the moral and human decadence this entity has...
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) October 16, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The International Court of Justice is also weighing an ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations.
Although warned by their Israeli captors against speaking out, Palestinians freed from Israeli imprisonment this week described being held in a "slaughterhouse" rife with torture and abuse, including beatings, electrocution, and being shot with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Palestinians imprisoned by Israeli forces—including children—have described being raped and sexually assaulted by male and female soldiers, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music. Dozens of detainees have died in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton. IDF officers allegedly brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured.
Israeli physicians who served at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison also described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations.
Hamas' treatment of the Israelis it abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack is more complicated, with some freed captives saying they suffered torture and other abuse while others—especially those released early during the war—said they were treated relatively well. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier captured after the rest of his tank crew were killed said that although he was tortured, his captors granted his request for religious materials including a Torah. One woman even pushed back against Israeli media lies claiming she was wounded by her captors, when in fact it was an Israeli airstrike that injured her.
So far, Hamas has returned the bodies of nine Israeli and other hostages. Israel is calling on Hamas to “make all necessary efforts” to find and hand over the bodies of 21 remaining dead hostages still unaccounted for.
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'You Cease, I Fire': Israel Kills at Least 9 in Gaza, Says It Will Break Truce Aid Terms
"Israel is working extremely hard to blow up this ceasefire," said one observer after IDF troops shot dead Palestinians trying to return to their homes in the largely flattened strip.
Oct 14, 2025
Israeli occupation forces killed numerous Palestinian civilians in Gaza on Tuesday in an apparent violation of a ceasefire that Israel's government said it would continue to break by blocking the full flow of aid into the obliterated coastal strip until Hamas returns all bodies of hostages taken two years ago.
Gaza officials told international media outlets that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops shot dead at least nine unarmed Palestinians trying to return to their homes in northern Gaza City and southern Khan Younis. The bodies of six victims were reportedly brought to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, while three other victims were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Witnesses described the killings as unprovoked. An IDF spokesperson acknowledged that five Palestinians were killed, claiming that they came too close to Israeli troops by crossing the so-called "Yellow Line" established as part of last week's ceasefire agreement, a contentious demarcation that leaves more than half of Gaza under the control of occupation forces.
“The IDF calls on Gaza residents to follow its instructions and not to approach the troops deployed in the area,” the IDF spokesperson said.
Israel and Hamas accused each other of violating the fragile ceasefire.
Israel claimed that the Palestinian political and resistance group breached the US-brokered truce by withholding the bodies of Israeli and other hostages who died or were killed in captivity. Hamas—which has turned over eight of the 28 hostages' bodies it held—previously and repeatedly warned that it would take time to locate and transport all of the remains amid the ruins of an annihilated Gaza.
Hamas, meanwhile, called Israel's announcement Tuesday that it would slash by half the already inadequate humanitarian aid allowed to enter through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt a "blatant breach" of the ceasefire. Hamas urged international mediators such as the United States, Egypt, and Qatar to help enforce the ceasefire agreement, warning that Israel's continued violations risked blowing up the tenuous truce.
During the last Gaza ceasefire—which lasted from January-March 2025—United Nations officials said Israel violated the agreement more than 1,000 times before scrapping the deal and ramping up its genocide.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday pressured Hamas to quickly turn over all remaining hostages' bodies and lay down its arms, saying that "if they don't disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently."
Hamas disarmament is a non-negotiable part of Trump's 20-point plan for ending Israel's two-year genocidal assault and siege on Gaza, during which more than 247,000 Palestinians—including at least 64,000 children—were killed or maimed or are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Around 2 million Palestinians were also forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened during the war. However, senior Hamas officials have rejected the disarmament demand out of hand.
On Monday, Hamas freed 20 Israeli captives it had held since the October 7, 2023 attack in exchange for Israel's release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians it imprisoned.
While Hamas says logistical barriers are behind its slow return of hostage bodies, critics accused Israel of deliberately trying to destroy the ceasefire.
"Israel is working extremely hard to blow up this ceasefire, now reneging on promises to surge humanitarian aid by saying Hamas has been to slow in finding all the bodies of hostages (which mediators were clear would take some time, for obvious reasons)," US investigative journalist Ryan Grim said Tuesday on social media.
His Drop Site News co-founder, Jeremy Scahill, said on X that "during Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed."
"Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen," he added, "so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half."
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'Solidarity as a Crime': Report Details Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protests Across West
"This trend," said one leader at the International Federation for Human Rights, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
Oct 14, 2025
A report released Tuesday by one of the world's oldest human rights groups lays out how, "from Paris to Washington, Berlin to London, support for Palestinian rights has been censored, criminalized, or violently repressed under the pretexts of combating antisemitism and protecting national security."
The International Federation for Human Rights, also known by its French abbreviation FIDH, published Solidarity as a Crime: Voices for Palestine Under Fire just days after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip, following over two years of an Israeli assault widely condemned as genocide against Palestinians.
FIDH focused on "violations of the rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression in the context of the repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement" in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
"This trend," said Yosra Frawers, head of the Maghreb and Middle East Desk at FIDH, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
The publication explains each country's history with Israel and other notable background, such as anti-protest laws, along with recent violations of the rights of academics, activists, advocacy groups, journalists, and elected officials.
For example, it points out that the US government has given Israel tens of billions of dollars in military aid since the war began two years ago, and "pro-Palestine solidarity activism in the United States has been met with repression, sanctions, and censorship for many decades."
"Since 2014, US federal and state lawmakers have proposed nearly 300 pieces of legislation aimed at repressing expressions of solidarity with Palestine, with over a quarter of the bills passing into law in 38 states and the federal government," the document details. "Over 80 bills were proposed in 2023 alone, with some as extreme as a federal bill proposing to expel all Palestinians from the US."
The report spotlights how US demonstrations against the genocide "have been met with significant suppression at the hands of the state," particularly the protests at universities. The Trump administration is still trying to deport foreign students who criticized the Israeli assault and the US government's support for it, and threatening higher education institutions' access to federal funding.
The section on the United Kingdom acknowledges that Palestine was previously "occupied by Britain under the mandate system," and the UK "has had a close relationship with Israel from the very beginning of the creation of the Israeli state" in the 1940s.
Over the past two years, the British government "has repeatedly minimized and legitimized Israel's atrocities in Gaza," and carried out a "sustained attack" on the right to protest, the publication continues. "Protests in solidarity with Gaza and against Israel's genocidal violence have been met with high levels of police surveillance and police violence."
Germany's relationship with Israel "is shaped profoundly by the history of the Holocaust," and the European powerhouse is now the Israeli government's "second-most important strategic partner in the world," behind only the United States, the document notes. It calls out "widespread bans on protests" and highlights how "Pro-Palestinian civil society organizations have been hit particularly hard by repressive measures."
France—which is enduring a broader political crisis—is also "a long-standing ally to Israel" with "a history of repression of expressions of solidarity with Palestine," according to Paris-based FIDH. "On October 12, 2023 the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin called for a complete ban on all assemblies expressing solidarity with Palestine."
"Despite the ban, mass protests went ahead in cities across France... These protests were met with police violence, including the use of tear gas and water cannons. Many protestors were arrested, often using disproportionate force," the group wrote. "Immigrants and foreigners have often borne the brunt of repressive measures."
FIDH's report—which features "vital" contributions from the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States, Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland, and Ligue des droits de l'Homme in France—concludes with recommendations, including specific suggestions for each country examined as well as civil society groups, media platforms, and academic, regional, international, and philanthropic institutions.
"States must guarantee everyone the right to express themselves and to mobilize peacefully, on all causes," said FIDH president Alice Mogwe. "The defense of human rights ought not to be constrained by political sensibilities."
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