A PALESTINIAN professor working at Robert Gordon University gave a powerful speech in which he detailed his experience of torture at the hands of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Professor Eyad Elyan lived his teenage years under military occupation in the Palestinian village of Abu Dis during the first Palestinian Intifada – a series of protests and acts carried out by Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territories.
Elyan was able to compete his education in Palestine and the UK in computer-related disciplines and is now a professor in AI and machine learning based in Aberdeen.
During a lecture at The Ark in Glasgow, he detailed his experience of torture when he was just 16 years old.
The professor explained he was 15 when the Intifada started and that it was a time when the streets were “governed by young people” who decided to rebel against the Israeli military.
“We became the police,” Elyan said as he reflected on a "nostalgic time" but added that the turning point came on November 21 1988 when soldiers came to his house.
He said that the soldiers entered into the living room and reflected on the impact it had on his mother, who he says became “fragile”.
Elyan added: “Obviously they blindfolded me. Remember you’re talking about a 16-year-old child.
“So my daughter is 16 now. I just can’t imagine somebody doing the same to her. They put me in the floor of the jeep, surrounded by soldiers, they were speaking in a quick way about something very serious which intimidates you.
“They drove for another 10 or 20 minutes and threw another Palestinian guy next to me.”
He said he was taken to Al-Moskobiya detention centre which is known for having a “very bad reputation”.
“We entered there and they took our blindfolds and we were still handcuffed,” he said.
“This guy came in, his name was Abu Ilias. He asked one of us why we were here and they said, ‘I don’t know’ and he slapped him so hard.
“The moment he was slapped he started bleeding and I started terrifying. It was from his nose, from his mouth and he looked at me and said, ‘why are you here’.
“When I said, ‘I don’t know,’ he slapped me again and apparently this guy as famous for this. He had a tough slap that he used on every prisoner.”
Moving on, Elyan said he was taken into an interrogation area where he was blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair.
He said: “They will leave you there with a sack on your head till the moment you genuinely feel that they forgot about you.
“There was 100,000 Palestinians coming in and out. Because you are so tired and frustrated and terrified and still a child, I used to fall asleep. And the moment your head goes down, someone would come from behind and push you and say, ‘your dad died’.
“When they put you in this situation, you lose a lot of your senses. You have a dirty bag on, you lose a sense of time and you become so fragile you could receive any message they tell you.
“And when they tell you your dad died, you have so much to worry about. I don’t know how long this lasted but the whole interrogation happened across seven and eight days.”
He then added that he was taken to another room which he remembers vividly as he was “fully broken, fully uncertain and fully terrified”.
He said another officer told him he was “too young” and that he was told to say, “whatever you know and you should be safe”.
When Elyan said he didn’t tell officers anything further, he says he was stripped of his clothes and that if he didn’t tell them anything he would be raped.
The professor further explained that the torture “leaves a scar” and carried on to speak of ongoing torture in Palestine as Israel continues its assault on the region.
Statistics from the Defence for Children Palestine organisation documented 838 cases where Palestinian children were systematically tortured between January 1 2016 and December 2023.
It was also reported by Al-Jazeera that there was evidence of torture found upon the discovery of mass graves in two hospitals in the Gaza Strip containing 392 bodies.
