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This article contains descriptions of sexual abuse and violence which some readers may find distressing.

Two Palestinian men have told the BBC they personally experienced the kind of beatings and sexual abuse highlighted in recent reports into the treatment of prisoners in Israeli detention.

The United Nations Committee against Torture said last month that it was deeply concerned about reports indicating “a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture and ill treatment” of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails. It said the allegations had “gravely intensified” after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Other reports by Israeli and Palestinian rights groups have detailed what they say is “systematic” abuse.

Israel has denied all the allegations, but rights groups say the fury in the country over the 7 October attacks and the treatment of Israeli hostages in Gaza has created a culture of impunity within the prison services, especially towards detainees who have expressed support for Hamas and its attacks.

Last year, leaked CCTV footage from inside an Israeli military prison showed a Palestinian man from Gaza allegedly being sexually abused by prison guards. That led to a resignation and recriminations at the top of Israel’s military and political establishment.

Sami al-Saei, 46, now works in a furniture shop, but he used to be a freelance journalist in the town of Tulkarm, in the north of the occupied West Bank.

He was arrested by Israeli soldiers in January 2024 after working with reporters to arrange interviews with members of Hamas and other armed groups.

He was detained without being charged for 16 months, under a controversial Israeli system known as administrative detention, before being released this summer.

While he was being held in Megiddo prison in northern Israel, he said, the guards partially stripped him and raped him with a baton on or around 13 March 2024.

He said he had decided to speak to the BBC about his allegations of sexual abuse, despite the risk of being ostracised in the often conservative Palestinian society in the West Bank.

“There were five or six of them,” he said.

“They were laughing and enjoying it. The guard asked me: ‘Are you enjoying this? We want to play with you, and bring your wife, your sister, your mother, and friends here too,’” Mr al-Saei continued.

“I was hoping to die and be done from that, as the pain was not only caused by the rape, but also from the severe and painful beating.”

He said the assault lasted around 15 to 20 minutes, during which time the guards also squeezed his genitals, causing extreme pain.

He said the beatings happened on an almost daily basis, but he was only sexually abused once.

The BBC asked the Israel Prison Service (IPS) for a response to Mr al-Saei’s allegations. It sent a statement, which said: “We operate in full accordance with the law, while ensuring the safety, welfare, and rights of all inmates under its custody.

“We are not aware of the claims described, and to the best of our knowledge, no such incidents have occurred under IPS responsibility.”

We also asked the IPS whether an investigation had been launched into the alleged sexual assault and whether any medical records existed. It did not comment.

Allegations of abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons have been made for decades, but one recent case has shaken the country’s establishment and deepened a growing divide in Israeli society over the treatment of prisoners and detainees accused of supporting Hamas.

In August 2024, leaked CCTV from inside Sde Teiman military prison in southern Israel showed a Palestinian detainee from Gaza allegedly being abused with a sharp object by soldiers, leaving the man with a pierced rectum. The assault allegedly happened in July 2024.

Five Israeli reservist soldiers were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to the detainee.

Last month, they convened a press conference on Israeli television, four of them appearing in black balaclavas to hide their identities.

In an interview with Channel 14 News, a fifth soldier pulled off his mask to reveal his face, saying he had nothing to hide.

All five have denied the charges.

The reservists held the press conference after it emerged that the CCTV footage was leaked by the Israeli military’s top lawyer, Military Advocate General Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi.

She resigned in October, saying that she took full responsibility for the leak. She explained that she had wanted to “counter false propaganda against the army’s law enforcement authorities” – a reference to claims from some right-wing politicians that the allegations were fabricated.

Supporters of the far right have held protests in support of the five accused reservists outside Sde Teiman prison.

In July, before her resignation, at a fiery committee hearing at Israel’s parliament, Hanoch Milwidsky, a politician from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, was challenged over whether raping a detainee was acceptable.

“Shut up, shut up,” he shouted. “Yes, everything is legitimate if they are Nukhba [elite Hamas fighters who took part in the 7 October attacks]. Everything.”

A recent opinion poll by the widely respected Israel Democracy Institute indicated that the majority of the Israeli public oppose investigating soldiers when they are suspected of having abused Palestinians from Gaza.

Ahmed, not his real name, lives in the West Bank with his wife and 11 children.

He was arrested by soldiers in January 2024 and was found guilty of incitement to terrorism, after making social media posts praising the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, in which around 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, were killed and a further 251 were taken hostage.

He was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 3,000 shekels ($935, £700).

He alleges serious sexual abuse while in Israeli detention.

“The prison guards, three of them, took me into a bathroom and stripped me completely naked before forcing me to the ground,” Ahmed said in an interview at his home.

“They put my head in the toilet bowl and a massive man, maybe 150kg (330lb), stood on my head, so I was bent over. Then, I heard the voice of someone talking to the prison dog. The dog was named Messi, like the footballer.”

He then detailed how he said the dog was used to sexually humiliate him. He said his trousers and underwear were removed and the dog mounted his back.

“I could feel its breath… then it jumped on me… I started to scream. The more I screamed, the more they beat me until I almost lost consciousness.”

During his time in detention, Ahmed also said the guards would beat him on a regular basis, including on his genitals.

He said he was released 12 days after the alleged sexual abuse, after serving his full sentence.

We asked Ahmed if there were any medical documents regarding his claims, but he said he did not have any.

We contacted the IPS to ask for a response to Ahmed’s allegations, and if an investigation had been launched into his alleged abuse, but we did not receive a reply.

There are over 9,000 Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli jails, nearly double the number before the 7 October attacks. Many have never been charged.

The recent report by the UN Committee against Torture unequivocally condemned the 7 October attacks, and also expressed deep concern over Israel’s response and the huge loss of human life in Gaza.

Some of the hostages abducted on 7 October and survivors of the attacks have also made allegations of sexual abuse, rape and torture by Hamas and its allies.

Hamas has also publicly executed Palestinians in Gaza accused of collaborating with Israel.

There are also claims of abuse within prisons run by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is in charge in parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control and is a political and military rival of Hamas.

The BBC has spoken to a former detainee who said PA security officers beat him and used electric shocks on him.

The BBC has contacted the PA for comment but received no reply. It has previously denied allegations of systematic abuse.

In a report submitted in October to the UN Committee against Torture, five Israeli human rights groups said there had been “a dramatic escalation in torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment across all detention facilities, carried out with near total impunity and implemented as state policy targeting Palestinians”.

Adalah, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Parents Against Child Detention, HaMoked, and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel presented evidence that they said showed Israel had “dismantled existing safeguards and now employs torture throughout the entire detention process – from arrest to imprisonment – targeting Palestinians under occupation and Palestinian citizens, with senior officials sanctioning these abuses while judicial and administrative mechanisms fail to intervene”.

The report said such practices had resulted in a surge of Palestinian deaths in custody, with at least 94 deaths in Israeli custody documented between the start of the Gaza war and the end of August 2025.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva rejected the allegations made before the UN Committee against Torture as “disinformation”.

Daniel Meron told the expert panel last month that Israel was “committed to upholding its obligations in line with our moral values and principles, even in the face of the challenges posed by a terrorist organisation”.

He said the relevant Israeli agencies complied fully with the prohibition against torture and that Israel rejected allegations of systematic use of sexual and gender-based violence.

Artists and music fans from around the world have been rediscovering the 1970s sound of Zambia known as Zamrock in recent years, and now one of the country’s biggest stars is embracing it, hoping to give it a fresh twist.

When devising her third studio album, Sampa the Great looked to the niche, brief musical movement that ignited her birth country more than 50 years ago.

“We were looking for a sound and a voice that was so post-colonial. And Zamrock was that sound – that sound of new freedom, that sound of boldness,” the Zambian-born, Botswanan-raised rapper – who has performed at the likes of Glastonbury, Coachella and the Sydney Opera House – told the BBC.

Zamrock – with its heady blend of psychedelic rock and traditional Zambian sounds – rears its head on Can’t Hold Us, the first single to be released from Sampa’s upcoming album.

Fuzz guitars thrust the song forwards, as 32-year-old Sampa, full name Sampa Tembo, defiantly raps: “They don’t have the guts to match my prowess.”

And she’s not the only contemporary artist who has been digging through Zamrock’s dusty crates. In the past few years US hitmakers Travis Scott, Yves Tumour and Tyler, the Creator have sampled tracks from Ngozi Family, Amanaz and WITCH – all popular bands in Zamrock’s 1970s heyday.

Zamrock can also be heard on our screens – HBO superhero series Watchmen and Emmy-winner Ted Lasso have incorporated songs from the genre in their soundtracks.

It is an unexpected resurgence, especially given that in its heyday, Zamrock never really left the African continent.

The movement emerged in the 1970s, in a Zambia recently broken free from its British colonisers. The nation was basking in an economic boom and President Kenneth Kaunda had enforced a “Zambia first” policy which, among many other things, meant 95% of the music played by radio stations had to be of Zambian origin.

The groundwork was laid for young creatives to forge a bold, distinctly Zambian musical identity.

“We were influenced by rock bands like Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown,” says WITCH frontman Emmanuel Chanda, better known as Jagari, after Mick Jagger.

“But we were Africans. We wanted to play like those rock bands but then the African aspect was also calling: ‘You can’t leave me behind’.”

In the 1970s, Zambia’s recording studios were rudimentary and there was no established recording industry. Regardless, Zamrock thrived.

Musicians illuminated stages with bell-bottom jeans, platform shoes and colourful headbands. WITCH, an acronym for We Intend To Cause Havoc, lived up to their name, with fans clamouring outside sold-out venues, hoping to watch marathon shows that sometimes lasted from 19:00 to 02:00.

“The fact that they mixed traditional music with psychedelic rock in a conservative country… and to be able to do that and be loud about it – it was something very bold to do in the 70s, let alone now,” says Sampa – who was pleased to recently discover that her uncle, “Groovy” George Kunda, was a founding member of WITCH.

But for all of its impact, Zamrock could not last. The genre crumbled after roughly a decade, when Zambia was hit with a series of crises. The price of copper, Zambia’s main export, plummeted, leading to an economic decline that diminished the ability to tour, record and buy music.

Musical piracy also hit Zamrockers, as bootleggers made money by copying and selling their music.

And from the 1980s, the country was badly hit by the HIV/Aids crisis, which led to the deaths of many musicians. Five of WITCH’s founding members died from Aids.

Zamrock lay dormant for decades. Its surviving founders returned to civilian life – Jagari went to work in the mines to support his family.

But in the early 2010s, seemingly out of nowhere, record collectors in the West caught on to the genre.

US-based label Now-Again Records played a significant part in Zamrock’s revival, sourcing and reissuing albums from some of the genre’s biggest names.

“I wasn’t sure if it had a market. I was just sure that it was very cool,” Now-Again label boss Eothen “Egon” Alapatt tells the BBC.

“I figured: ‘If I’m curious about this, there’s probably other people who are curious about this’.”

Vinyl enthusiasts rushed to buy original Zamrock records, which only exist in small numbers, and their value naturally spiked.

“I started getting a lot of requests for original Zamrock records, and I didn’t understand why people were so interested,” says Duncan Sodala, a Zamrock fan and the owner of Time Machine, a record store in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

Mr Sodala went online and was “shocked” to find that records pressed in the 1970s were selling for between $100 (£74) and $1,000 (£740).

In 2011, Now-Again Records released a compilation of WITCH’s music. The ensuing buzz led to a reincarnation of the band, featuring Jageri and Patrick Mwondela from WITCH’s old days, and a number of younger European musicians.

WITCH have since released two albums, starred in a documentary, played at the iconic Glastonbury Festival and toured outside Africa – something the original band never managed to achieve.

“It’s like a new lease on life I never expected at my advanced age,” 74-year-old Jagari says on a call from New Zealand, the final stop on WITCH’s 2025 world tour.

“In Munich, there was crowd surfing, which I had never done before.”

Though Jagari is thrilled by a second chance to play Zamrock, new opportunities are a reminder of his sorely missed bandmates.

“There are times that I wish the whole band, the original line-up, was there to showcase what it was like in the beginning,” he says.

The crowds at WITCH’s shows, comprising fans young and old, are proof of Zamrock’s fresh appeal.

Other Zamrockers are also being rediscovered – Tyler, the Creator, who sampled the Ngozi Family song 45,000 Volts on his 2024 track Noid, called the band “incredible”.

“The whole country was just doing some, really, really good stuff,” he told popular interviewer Nardwuar.

Go-to hip-hop producer Madlib and Mike D of the Beastie Boys have also voiced admiration for the genre, while Third Man Records, the label co-owned by blues-rocker Jack White, has released a recording of live WITCH music.

Egon believes Zamrock’s surprise popularity is down to its exuberance. He also suggests that the genre was initially boosted by record collectors, as a lot of its songs are in English.

“There was a tremendous bias amongst collectors of rock and roll music from around the world against music in the native language of the country that it was created,” he says.

Sodala, on the other hand, thinks Zamrock’s newer fans are drawn to the music’s “innocence”.

“I think people listen to it and feel how genuine it is,” he says.

Although the record-store owner welcomes Western artists sampling Zamrock, he feels the genre risks being reduced to curated snippets.

“I think this is the reason why an artist like Sampa is very important – because she doesn’t want [Zamrock] to be known just for the samples,” he says.

“I think there is a fear that if we are not loud about Zamrock’s origins, we may be taken out of the equation. The more we think about that, the more we want to be loud about where it comes from.”

Although the likes of hip-hop and R&B enjoy great popularity in Zambia, numerous young artists from the country – like Stasis Prey, Vivo and Sampa the Great collaborator Mag 44 – have also been experimenting with the genre.

Lusaka restaurant Bo’jangles set up an annual Zamrock Festival three years ago and the city’s Modzi Arts institution has established a small museum dedicated to the genre.

Sampa says her upcoming album, which does not yet have a release date, falls into a genre she calls “nu Zamrock”.

Although she has experimented with Zamrock before, this time its rhythms will run through her entire album, mixed with other influences like hip-hop.

“I think Zamrock’s resurgence will be something that is really huge,” she says.

In New Zealand, Jagari is elated that Sampa and her counterparts are running with the genre he helped birth.

“The fire has been lit,” he says. “It’s up to the younger generation to put more firewood to it and let the flames burn.”