GAZA, (PIC)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas.
“Some of our staff have conveyed to UNRWA teams that they were forced to (make) confessions under torture and ill-treatment. These false confessions were in response to questions about relations between UNRWA and Hamas and their involvement in the October 7 attack against Israel,” UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said in a statement.
Touma said that false confessions elicited “under torture” were being used “to further spread misinformation about the Agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.”
The statements are part of an as yet unreleased report compiled by UNRWA saying Israel’s widespread physical and psychological abuse of Palestinians detained in Gaza during the war, including 21 UNRWA staff members, some of whom said they were beaten and threatened.
The unreleased report, a copy of which CNN obtained, is largely based on the testimony of Gazan detainees held in Israeli prisons and at military sites and released back into Gaza at the Kerem Abu Salem border crossing between mid-December and mid-February.
