I still feel the pain from Israeli torture: Female Palestinian student
A female Palestinian, who aspires to become a journalist projecting the plight of her people to the world, recounts the torture-filled ordeal that she suffered during some 15 months of imprisonment by the Israeli regime on apparent political grounds.
The story of 23-year-old Mays Abu Ghosh, who now studies journalism at Birzeit University in the West Bank, goes back to August 2019, when her home in the Qalandiya refugee camp in the west-central part of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory was raided by the Israeli regime’s military. The forces, who were holding their dogs on leashes, woke the family up, rummaged their rooms, and then spirited Mays away into incarceration.
On Friday, the Electronic Intifada, a website that covers Palestinian issues, published her description of what she went through during the drawn-out imprisonment.
Most of her suffering relates to her one-month-plus-long detention at a center in Jerusalem al-Quds, where she was subjected to lengthy sleep deprivation and forced into stress positions.
“The most severe thing was three days in a row without being allowed to sleep,” she said. “I had to stay in a chair and if I closed my eyes, a soldier would come over and shout at me. I was slapped in the face continuously,” the student added.
Mays was forced to stand and bend her knees, with Israeli forces pressing down hard on her shoulders, the website wrote, adding that she had to remain in such painful positions for long stretches of time.
Her shackles were so tight that her hands and feet started to bleed, the outlet reported.
“I still have various pains – in my back, feet, and head – because of the torture,” she said.
