Ex-hostage says Liri Albag saved her life as Hamas captors tortured, threatened her

Amit Soussana, released in 2023, credits intervention of hostage freed Saturday; Naama Levy, Romi Gonen share beginnings of recovery, urge release of remaining captives

Released hostage Amit Soussana speaks during a rally calling for the release of Hamas captives held in Gaza, at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, January 18, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Released hostage Amit Soussana speaks during a rally calling for the release of Hamas captives held in Gaza, at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, January 18, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Freed hostage Amit Soussana, who was released in the first hostage-truce deal with Hamas in November 2023, shared Tuesday that Liri Albag, who was among four hostages released on Saturday, saved her life in captivity.

Her comments came as freed hostage Naama Levy made her first public statements since her own release on Saturday, and Romi Gonen, released 10 days ago, dedicated a song on the radio to her family, and as more details began to emerge about returning captives’ recovery process.

The current hostage-ceasefire deal went into effect a week and a half ago.

In an interview aired Tuesday evening, Soussana said she owes Albag her life, after Albag convinced their terrorist captors in Gaza that Soussana was not an IDF officer.

Speaking with Channel 12’s “Uvda” investigative program, Soussana, 40, said her captors bound her arms and legs together, beat her with a stick and threatened her with a sharp metal object, and demanded that she admit to being in the military, claiming they had learned from TV that she was.

She said the captors brought other hostages, including Albag, to ask her to come clean.

A guard pointed a gun and her head and told her, “You have 40 minutes to tell us the truth, or else I kill you,” she said.

Freed hostage Liri Albag runs to hug her siblings in Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva on January 25, 2025. (Haim Zach/GPO)

She said Albag talked to the guard and managed to persuade the captors that Soussana wasn’t in the military.

“I told her when she came back: ‘I don’t know if they would have killed me or not; as far as I’m concerned, you saved my life,” Soussana recalled.

Soussana also said that in the first three weeks of her captivity, she was kept alone in an apartment with two guards who bound her legs with a metal chain and with two locks to a window, “like an animal.”

She also recounted the sexual assault she endured by one of the captors, a story she first revealed in an interview with The New York Times last year.

Naama Levy: ‘I’m feeling better every day’

Meanwhile, in a post to Instagram Tuesday, Levy — a surveillance soldier abducted from the Nahal Oz military base during the Hamas-led invasion on October 7, 2023, that started the ongoing war — wrote, “I’m home. After 477 days I’m finally home. I am safe and protected surrounded by family, and I’m feeling better every day.”

In her post, Levy also shared some details about her captivity: “For the first 50 days after October 7, I was alone most of the time, and after that I was in captivity with my friends” — fellow surveillance soldiers and civilians — “who gave me strength and hope. We strengthened each other until we were released, and after that, too.”

The freed hostage issued a call for the return of those still held captive: “We are waiting for Agamy,” she said, using an affectionate name for Agam Berger, the last of the five female surveillance soldiers abducted that day who remains in captivity, “and the rest of the hostages to be able to complete the process of recovery.”

After inserting an Israeli flag emoji, Levy concluded: “It’s important to me to thank the IDF soldiers and the entire nation of Israel! While I was still in captivity, I saw how you were fighting for me. Thank you everyone, I love you.”

Flanked by her parents, freed hostage Naama Levy reacts after seeing her relatives in Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva on January 25, 2025. (Haim Zach/GPO)

‘Romi went through hell’

The Israeli public also heard on Tuesday from freed hostage Gonen, a civilian who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, and was among the first three hostages to be released in the framework of the current deal, on January 19.

Gonen, in a message delivered to the IDF’s popular music radio station, dedicated a song — “Ad Aharei Hanetzah” (literally: ‘Until After Eternity’) by Pe’er Tasi — to her family, writing, “To the strongest family there is. You are the best in the world, and the amount of love and appreciation that I have for you can never be expressed in words. I’m with you, ad aharei hanetzah.”

Romi’s sister Yarden Gonen spoke on Tuesday at a singalong rally in so-called Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, where she shared some of what she has heard from her sister since her return from captivity.

“Over the course of 471 days our Romi went through hell,” Yarden said. Romi’s “gunshot wound from that cursed day wasn’t properly treated, and every day, up to and including today, she suffers pain and significant damage to the function of her arm. And despite this, as was said, she came out victorious, and said: ‘Dad! I came home!’”

Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi was recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza after 471 days, speaks at a rally in Tel Aviv, January 28, 2025. (Lior Rotstein/Hostages Forum)

The day of Romi’s return from Gaza “will forever be the day of her rebirth. In her own words — ‘There’s life after death.’ And what a life awaits you, my love,” Yarden said.

The hostage’s sister also made several calls for the return of the remaining 87 hostages.

“Over the last nine days, since we were able to embrace and to see our sun smiling again, safe and protected, there is one thing that hasn’t left her — the urgent need to return all of the hostages, not to give up on any stage of the agreement,” she said.

Some right-wing lawmakers have called for a return to fighting after the deal’s initial, 42-day stage.

Deborah Leshem, grandmother of freed hostage Romi Gonen, watches as workers take down an enormous sign calling for Gonen’s release, at a construction site in Tel Aviv, January 23, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Yarden, in English, thanked US President Donald Trump for his role in securing her sister’s release, and called on him to ensure the deal is implemented in its entirety.

“President Trump – thanks to you, I can hug my sister again. It gave our country hope that with strong leadership and determination, we can bring everyone back,” she said.

“Please help us complete what you’ve started and bring every last hostage home, as you so powerfully declared since you were elected. Thank you for choosing the good over the evil.”

She also thanked former US president Joe Biden for his efforts in securing the hostage deal, which went into effect on his last day in office.

Yarden also told the crowd that every day, Romi wears a piece of tape bearing the number of days that the remaining hostages have been in captivity.

The practice — started by Rachel Goldberg, whose son Hersh survived almost a year in Hamas captivity before being murdered by his captors — has become a symbol of the movement calling for a hostage deal. Romi also wears a pin calling for the hostages’ release, Yarden said.

Romi Gonen (right) and her mother, Meirav Leshem Gonen, embrace after Romi’s return from Hamas captivity, January 19, 2025. (IDF)

Details on hospital stay

The four female surveillance soldiers who returned from captivity this past Saturday — Levy, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, and Albag — have been receiving visitors every day since their return, according to a statement by Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where they have stayed since their release.

The hospital also provided details on measures to protect the returnees’ privacy, and called on visitors to coordinate their arrival with the hospital and the freed hostages’ families beforehand.

“Every day, each of the soldiers is visited by some 10 people on average,” the hospital said. “The visitors must deposit their cellphones before the meeting, with the exception of the immediate family only. That is to say: friends, uncles/aunts, cousins — none of these people may enter with their phones, except parents and siblings.”

Top (L-R) Karina Ariev, Liri Albag; bottom (L-R) Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, the four Israeli released hostages, at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, January 25, 2025 (Israel Defense Forces)

Meanwhile, all employees who enter the division of the hospital where the four women are staying are required to use a red sticker to cover their cellphone’s camera, Channel 12 reported, citing the hospital statement.

Hebrew media also reported that Israeli singer Hanan Ben Ari visited the hospital on Sunday evening, to perform a private concert for the returnees and their families. He played for almost two hours, taking requests from the four women.

Eighty-seven of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. The bodies of 40 others have been recovered throughout the course of the war.

The 33 hostages slated to be returned in phase one of the Gaza ceasefire deal. Row 1 (L-R): Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Arbel Yehoud, Doron Steinbrecher, Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas, Shiri Bibas; Row 2: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Danielle Gilboa, Naama Levy, Ohad Ben-Ami, Gadi Moshe Moses; Row 3: Keith Siegel, Ofer Calderon, Eli Sharabi, Itzik Elgarat, Shlomo Mantzur, Ohad Yahalomi, Oded Lifshitz; Row 4: Tsahi Idan, Hisham al-Sayed, Yarden Bibas, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Yair Horn, Omer Wenkert, Sasha Trufanov; Row 5: Eliya Cohen, Or Levy, Avera Mengistu, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem-Tov (all photos courtesy)

So far, seven hostages have been freed as part of the current deal, which mandates the release of 33 so-called “humanitarian hostages” during its first 42-day phase, with fighting stopped in the Strip.

As those hostages — women, children, elderly people, and sick people — are gradually released, Israel is to release some 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners, including more than a hundred serving life sentences for terror attacks.

The three-phase deal’s later phases are to see negotiations with the stated goal of reaching a “sustainable calm” in the enclave, alongside the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, the release of more Palestinian security prisoners, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.

The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

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