Far-right Israelis at the time of the abuse scandal protested against the soldiers’ arrest [Getty/file photo]
The Israeli military said on Thursday it had dropped charges against five soldiers accused of raping and abusing a Palestinian detainee at the controversial high-security Sde Teiman prison, a case that had sparked widespread outrage.
“In light of significant developments since the filing of the indictment in the Sde Teiman case, the Military Advocate 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 over the rape and abuse of a Palestinian detainee in July 2024 at the Sde Teiman detention centre near the Gaza Strip.
At the time, the army said the soldiers were accused of “acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee’s buttocks with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum”.
Explaining the decision to drop the charges, the military claimed that “procedural difficulties regarding the transfer of information” by Israeli police had “undermined the defendants’ right to a fair trial”.
Another “factor” cited was that the victim had been returned to Gaza and was therefore unable to testify in the case.
The military said army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir had called on personnel “to draw lessons” from the case to prevent similar occurences in the future.
The case also involved the military advocate general, who resigned following 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 advocate 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 took so long to close a case that was conducted in a criminal manner against IDF fighters who are confronting 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 centre was created to hold Palestinians forcibly detained, often without charge, from Gaza early in Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory, which has killed over 72,000 people.
The detention facility came under fire amid the war for multiple cases of abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees.
Close to 100 Palestinians have also died in Israeli detention facilities over the course of the military onslaught as of November 2025, amid rampant abuse, torture, and deliberate neglect.
