Israel drops indictment of five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian detainee – World

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had dropped charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at the high-security Sde Teiman prison, a case that had sparked widespread outrage.

“In light of important developments that have occurred since the presentation of the indictment in the Sde Teiman case, the military attorney general decided today to order the cancellation of the indictment against the five defendants,” the military said.

In February 2025, the military announced that five reservists had been charged with alleged abuses against a Palestinian detainee in July 2024 at the Sde Teiman detention center near the Gaza Strip.

At the time, the army said the soldiers were accused of “acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing him in the buttocks with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the rectum.”

TO video Cases of soldiers sexually assaulting the Palestinian detainee had also come to light.

Explaining the decision to drop the charges, the military said that “procedural difficulties related to the transfer of information” by the Israeli police had “undermined the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”

Another factor cited was that the detainee had been returned to Gaza and therefore could not testify in the case.

The army said army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir had asked staff to “draw lessons” from the case to avoid similar occurrences in the future.

The case also involved the military attorney general, who resigned after suspicions that a video of the Sde Teiman incident had been leaked.

In her resignation letter, published in November 2025 by the media, the former military attorney general acknowledged that her office had distributed the video to the media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision.

“It is unacceptable that it has taken so long to close a case that was criminally pursued against IDF fighters facing the worst of our enemies,” he said in a statement. “The State of Israel must pursue its enemies, not its heroic fighters.”

The Sde Teiman detention center was created to house Gaza detainees at the beginning of Israel’s attack on the Strip in 2023.

Human rights groups frequently accuse Israeli prison authorities of mistreating Palestinian detainees.