IDF airs interrogation clips of terrorist father and son confessing to rape on Oct. 7
Abdallah Radi says he, along with his father and cousin, raped a woman in Kibbutz Nir Oz before his father murdered her
Two interrogation videos were released by the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday, showing Palestinian members of Hamas, a father and son, confessing to murdering and kidnapping people and raping women in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7.
The footage, which was released after it was reported by The Daily Mail, showed Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18 — both of whom were captured by the IDF in March — in a Shin Bet interrogation room describing their actions during the terrorist organization’s unprecedented terror onslaught in Israel, which targeted many civilian families in their homes and revelers at a music festival.
Both Jamal and Abdallah told the interrogators that they were members of Hamas, with Jamal saying he was a member of the terrorist organization’s security forces, and Abdallah saying he did not have a specific job yet because he was only 18.
Based on the testimony given by the two men, they crossed the fence into Israel from southern Gaza’s Khuza’a together with three men — two named Ahmad and one named Hassan — and “either killed or kidnapped” in every house in which they had found people.
Abdallah identified one of the Ahmads and Hassan as his cousins, saying that his cousin Ahmad was the one who convinced him to take part in the attack.
“I said no at first, but he kept trying to convince me, and we went,” he said.
Jamal, the father, told the interrogators that in the first house, the group shot and killed a couple in their late 40s before Hassan split from the group. Abdallah claimed the couple had been dead when they arrived.
In the next two houses they entered, Jamal said they kidnapped a woman and her daughter and a couple in their 50s and handed them over to other Hamas members who were in the kibbutz.
In the fourth house, he said the group kidnapped a “group of 10-12 civilians,” about five of whom were children.
Asked why they murdered the first couple and kidnapped the rest, Jamal said it was because “the door was open, but they came out of the bomb shelter and surprised us.”
Jamal said that in the next house, he saw a woman in leather shorts in the living room with a few other terrorists.
“I took her to another room and had sex with her. She was screaming, she was crying, and I did what I did, I raped her,” he said.
Jamal initially told the interrogators that he alone had raped the woman and that he left her crying on the bed and didn’t know what ultimately happened to her.
Abdallah, however, said he and his cousin, Ahmad, also raped the woman and that his father had killed her.
“My father raped her, then I did and then Ahmad did and then we left, but my father killed the woman after we finished raping her,” he said.
Asked why his version differed from Abdallah’s, Jamal initially said he was not lying, but then told the interrogator that he had wanted “to protect his son,” admitting that Abdallah and Ahmad had raped the woman as well.
In his interrogation, Abdallah said he had raped a second woman but did not specify which house she was in. Jamal did not discuss the second woman.
“I killed two people, I raped two people, and I broke into five houses,” Abdallah concluded at the end of his interrogation.
In response to The Daily Mail’s report, the IDF told the publication that “countless evidence of the brutal violence used by Hamas on October 7, including harrowing acts of gender-based and sexual violence,” has been seen in the months since the attack.
“These confessions further prove that any attempt to deny the horrors of October 7 and discredit the testimonies of witnesses, survivors and freed hostages is part of a campaign to delegitimize Israel, and to promote the justification of terrorism.”
In the months since the October 7 attack — in which thousands of invading Hamas-led terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 252 — the IDF has released multiple similar videos in which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists confessed to murdering and raping people in interrogation videos.
In light of these confessions, as well as conversations with survivors of the October 7 attack, the United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict Pramila Patten published a report in March in which she said that there was evidence that Hamas had used sexual violence in its attack and was continuing to do so against hostages in Gaza.
Nevertheless, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declined to include Hamas in a report published in his name last month on organizations suspected of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict.
The report did note that sexual violence was perpetrated during the attack, but did not specifically attribute it to Hamas.
In his report, Guterres referenced Patten’s assessment, but noted that it, “not being investigative in nature and given its limited duration, did not draw conclusions on attribution to specific armed groups or determine prevalence of incidents of conflict-related sexual violence during and after the attacks of 7 October. Such a determination would require a fully-fledged investigation.”
Meanwhile, a documentary by former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg that was released last month featured witnesses, survivors and people who dealt with the bodies after October 7 delivering harrowing testimonies of the sexual violence committed by the terrorists during the attack.
The October 7 attack sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza which has been raging on for more than eight months.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 35,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though only some 24,000 fatalities have been identified at hospitals. The toll, which cannot be verified and does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians, includes some 15,000 terror operatives Israel says it has killed in battle.
Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
The IDF says 286 soldiers have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Strip.
Jacob Magid and Renee Ghert-Zand contributed to this report.
