[Editor’s Note: This story includes graphic descriptions of alleged torture.]
(NEW YORK) — The bodies of some unidentified Palestinians handed over by Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement showed severe signs of torture, according to an aid worker who inspected at least 10 bodies.
“People’s bodies were covered in scars and what looked like open wounds. … It was just horrific,” Moureen Kaki, a Palestinian American activist and aid worker with medical charity Glia, told ABC News.
The bodies had signs of binding the hands and feet, contortion of limbs, cut off fingertips and disfigured heads, according to Kaki. Their hands had “gone stiff” and were “fixed” in a contorted position “as if they’d been that way for a long time,” she noted.
Kaki told ABC News she has not yet formally reported the alleged torture to a government or humanitarian agency.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal that involved a hostage exchange earlier this month. All remaining living hostages held by Hamas have been turned over to Israel and Hamas said it is continuing to search for the bodies of some deceased hostages.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel also turned over living and dead Palestinians in its custody.
The Israel Defense Forces rejected the allegations of torture and told ABC News that it operates “strictly in accordance with international law,” in a statement last week.
The type of scarring on the unidentified Palestinian bodies was “pretty consistent across most of them” and several bodies had “what looked like gunshot wounds in their legs,” according to Kaki.
“Probably about six” of the corpses she looked at had fingers missing, she noted.
“Every single person that I looked at had their hands and feet bound, or like traces of their hands or feet were bound in some way,” Kaki said.
In its statement rejecting allegations of torture, the IDF said it “did not tie any bodies prior to their release to the [Gaza] Strip.”
The bodies were returned by Israel without names and some had numbers “spray-painted” onto them, according to Kaki, who spoke from inside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. She has been based in Gaza non-stop since June 2024.
The corpses examined had possibly been held by Israel for as long as two years, Kaki noted.
The bodies had decomposed to some extent by the time she examined them, but medical professionals from Nasser Hospital believe that some sort of preservation process had been applied to the corpses while they were held by Israel, Kaki said.
Asked how confident she could be that the bodies had evidence of torture, Kaki said, “I would say 99% [sure] and the only 1% is that I didn’t see it [the alleged torture] with my own eyes.”
The Nasser Hospital medical professionals who inspected the bodies told her “that this was clearly torture and that most of it, if not all of it, was done while these people were still alive,” Kaki said.
ABC News has reviewed graphic images of corpses obtained by Kaki. The photos were taken from a Palestinian journalist whom Kaki said was present when she examined the bodies. The images appeared to back up her account.
More than 1,900 living Palestinian prisoners and detainees who were released by Israel under the ceasefire agreement. Kaki said she spoke to 35 former detainees who said they had experienced torture.
She also examined wounds on their bodies and, according to Kaki, their accounts “lined up very clearly with what their bodies showed.”
The IDF described the allegations as “false propaganda” and said “all of the [Palestinian] bodies returned [to Gaza] so far are from combatants within the Gaza Strip.”
A mass burial was held for 54 unidentified Palestinians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza last week.
Kaki said she believed authorities in Gaza were ultimately unable to identify the bodies returned due to their deformities and injuries.
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