A CHILD psychotherapist working for an Edinburgh charity, who disappeared after being picked up by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in war-torn Gaza, is reported to be in the notorious Sde Teiman prison.
News of Mohammad el Sharif was passed on to his young family in Gaza by a recently released prison detainee.
However, fears remain over Mohammad’s health and wellbeing.
The psychotherapist, who works for Edinburgh Firefly, was lifted at the end of November while trying to move his young family to a “safer” part of the stricken region.
Along with other residents, the family were walking westwards from Gaza City when soldiers stopped them at a checkpoint, separated the women and children on one side of the road, put the men on the other, then took all the men away.
It is not known when all the people detained during Israel’s onslaught on Gaza will be released.
Mohammad was the director of a child mental health clinic in Gaza which was bombed after the region’s invasion by Israel in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Despite being displaced several times, he had managed to keep contact with Firefly staff until he was picked up by the IDF on November 27.
Mohammad has no links with Hamas and can be seen with his three sons in a heartbreaking video made more than a year ago in which he pleads for an end to the violence.
Despite the report that he is alive, staff at Firefly International, which supports children affected by the ravages of war, are still “desperately concerned” about his welfare.
Director Jane Salmonson said: “It is difficult to sleep at night thinking of my former colleague, a child psychotherapist who has been incarcerated at Sde Teiman since November, being tortured, abused and starved.
“The only hope I can cling on to is that Mohammad and all other detainees will be released. The sheer scale, extent and depth of the cruelty inflicted on the Palestinian people, including children, in this conflict, is beyond belief.”
Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base which is being used as a detention centre for Palestinians, has been condemned internationally for alleged torture and gang rape of detainees, including children and health workers.
Prisoner testimonies of widespread human rights violations have been corroborated by Israeli whistleblowers and an investigation by CNN. Leaked CCTV footage has shown one gang rape of a Palestinian by Israeli soldiers.
Gazans like Mohammad who have been detained since October 7, 2023 have been classed as “unlawful combatants” and kept as suspects even if there is no evidence of any involvement with Hamas. Some have died and others have had limbs amputated as a result of injuries sustained from being shackled, according to reports.
One 14-year-old child, interviewed by Amnesty International, stated he had been beaten, burned with cigarettes and kept blindfolded and handcuffed. Several former detainees have testified they were tortured by a metal rod forced up their anuses and were also given electric shocks.
Human Rights Watch has documented the cases of detained health workers who were allegedly stripped, beaten, subject to sexual torture and violence and handcuffed for weeks on end.
One lawyer allowed access to the prison, Khaled Mahajneh, said conditions were “horrific” and a journalist he had been seeking called Muhammad Arab was “unrecognisable”. Arab told him multiple prisoners had died from torture injuries.
The Israeli military has stated that detainees are treated “appropriately and carefully” and that “incidents of unlawful handcuffing are not known to the authorities”.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Unlawful Combatants, Alice Jill Edwards, has called for an investigation into conditions at the prison and treatment of detainees.
