On March 18, 2024, Israel Defense Forces launched an offensive on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex, arresting scores of Palestinians, including Shadi Abu Sido, CPJ was told by his cousin Rami Abu Sido and Majida Karajah, a lawyer with the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer, via messaging app. Other journalists were also arrested in the raid. On October 13, 2025, Abu Sido, a camera operator for the privately owned Beirut-based broadcaster Palestine Today, was released after approximately 19 months in Israeli detention, as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Abu Sido told CPJ upon his release that on the day Israeli forces detained him, a soldier leaned close to him inside Al-Shifa Medical Complex and said, in English, “Game over.” Abu Sido, who was arrested while filming, told CPJ that the soldier that detained him said, “You will learn the meaning of journalism in Tel Aviv there.”
What followed, he said, was a ritual detainees call “al-Tashreefeh,” or “the grand welcome,” a coordinated beating of detainees upon arrival to Israeli prisons. Upon transfer to Sde Teiman detention camp, he said, he was shackled, blindfolded, and forced through a corridor of soldiers who beat him with batons and kicks. He later learned he had a broken rib.
Abu Sido recounted that he was subjected to week-long exposure to high-volume sound, including continuous amplified music, resulting in sleep deprivation and sensory disorientation in Israeli detention facilities, particularly at Sde Teiman. This practice was documented in at least 13 other testimonies of journalists, who named this torture method the “disco room.” In the disco room, Abu Sido recalled that he was stripped completely naked and was put in a “ghost hanging” position — suspended from his arms, bound behind the back, and pulled upwards.
Abu Sido told CPJ that his eyesight is significantly compromised after torture. He recalls that soldiers specifically mentioned deliberate eyesight damage as an objective during torture. He said they told him, “We broke your camera lens and will now break the lens in your eye so you never operate a camera again.” This detail is consistent with the earlier testimony of his cousin, who had told CPJ that former detainees had described Abu Sido as only able to see with one eye due to severe torture.
CPJ reviewed images and reports on the scars Abu Sido endured, which were consistent with his testimony.
Abu Sido said that he lost 32 kilograms (71 pounds) due to the poor quality and quantity of food provided to them, and was released weighing 63 kilograms (139 pounds).
“He already suffers from several medical conditions and he was severely tortured and didn’t receive any medical treatment. Israel accused him of being an unlawful combatant,” said Karajah, whose organization visited the journalist in the West Bank’s Ofer prison in July 2024.
Alaa Skafi, director of Addameer, told CPJ that journalists from Gaza are generally held under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the law allows Israel to hold detainees for long periods of time without charge and with limited access to legal counsel. Skafi and B’Tselem both described overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and abuse at Israeli prison facilities housing Palestinian journalists.
Abu Sido also said that an Israeli intelligence officer threatened him not to return to journalistic work or incite against them, otherwise he would be arrested and killed.
Abu Sido was among the journalists whose testimony was included in the CPJ special report, “We returned from hell,” published in February 2026, which compiles accounts from 58 journalists who reported patterns of abuse, torture, and mistreatment against Palestinian journalists inside Israeli prisons.
The Israeli military did not respond to CPJ’s repeated requests for comment on specific allegations by journalists in the report, instead requesting ID numbers and geographic coordinates that CPJ does not collect or provide. When asked about allegations of physical and sexual abuse, starvation, and the investigation and accountability process, an army spokesperson said “individuals detained are treated in accordance with international law,” adding that the armed forces “have never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,” and that any violations of protocol “will be looked into.”
CPJ also emailed the Israel Prison Service (IPS) regarding the allegations in the report. In response, the IPS said “all prisoners are detained according to the law” and that “all basic rights are fully upheld by professionally trained prison guards.” The service said it was unaware of the claims described, and that to its knowledge “no such events have occurred,” but noted that “prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”