An Israeli lawyer was doing exactly what a lawyer is supposed to do.

Visiting his client.

Then one day, the prisoner begged him to stop coming.

Not because he no longer wanted legal assistance.

But because, according to the lawyer, Israeli prison guards raped him with a mop handle before every visit.

His lawyer is Ben Marmarelli, an Israeli attorney who represents Palestinian prisoners, including the imprisoned political leader Marwan Barghouti. The client in this account was not Barghouti.

In an April 2026 interview with JURIST, Marmarelli said he had obtained access to this client at Ganot Prison after petitioning an Israeli court.

After visits resumed in July 2025, the prisoner told him in November that he had allegedly been raped before each meeting.

Different guards, Marmarelli says. Repeated assaults. Always before the lawyer arrived.

He believes the aim was to make the prisoner refuse further legal visits. He also acknowledges that he has no documentary evidence of a formal policy ordering those assaults.

Consider the psychological cruelty of that.

The person who comes to help you becomes associated with the worst thing that happens to you.

The possibility of justice becomes a source of terror.

I find Marmarelli credible.

His testimony is specific, public, and consistent with a wider body of evidence. He described the same core allegation in November 2025, months before the JURIST interview.

In its 2026 report on conflict-related sexual violence, the United Nations documented sexual violence against Palestinian detainees attributed to Israeli armed and security forces, including the Israel Prison Service.

In a separate October 2026 investigation, a UN Commission of Inquiry described a case in which a Palestinian detainee at Megiddo Prison was repeatedly raped with objects during interrogation. That was a different prisoner and case.

The Israel Prison Service denies allegations of widespread sexual abuse, describing them as false and unfounded.

Marmarelli’s particular account has not been independently verified. That distinction matters.

But so does the fact that his account no longer stands against a background of mere rumours. It sits alongside substantial UN findings and testimony from other detainees.

A prisoner should never have to choose between seeing his lawyer and protecting his body from sexual violence.

If Marmarelli’s account is true, that is precisely the choice his client was made to face.

And if the authorities dispute this allegation, an independent investigation with access to prisoners, guards and records should establish what happened.

The prisoner asked his lawyer to stop coming.

That sentence alone should disturb us profoundly.

Sources