Rescued hostage said kept in total darkness during captivity, showered once a month
52-year-old Bedouin father of 11 Farhan al-Qadi was left alone two weeks ago after captors heard IDF drills; tunnel was rigged with explosives to prevent him escaping
Two weeks before IDF troops arrived to rescue Farhan al-Qadi from the Gaza tunnels in which he had been kept for the majority of his ten-and-a-half-month captivity, the terror operatives tasked with guarding him fled, Hebrew media reported Wednesday as new details of his time as a Hamas hostage emerged.
According to reports, al-Qadi’s captors abandoned him in an underground room with nothing but some bread to eat after drills belonging to the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps were heard nearby. Before leaving, the Hamas operatives rigged the surrounding tunnels with explosives, to ensure that he would not make it out alive, should he try to flee.
When IDF troops entered the tunnels days later, al-Qadi was asked to identify himself. “Don’t shoot! I’m Farhan,” he responded, according to the Wall Street Journal.
When “I heard Hebrew outside the door, I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it,” he told President Isaac Herzog in a phone call soon after his rescue on Tuesday.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, he was able to inform the IDF which parts of the surrounding tunnel system were booby-trapped.
Al-Qadi was rescued Tuesday as troops combed a tunnel network in southern Gaza in search of hostages, the IDF said. He was abducted on October 7 from Kibbutz Magen, near the Gaza border, where he worked as a security guard at a packaging plant.
In a testimony obtained by Channel 12, the 52-year-old Bedouin father of 11 recounted that he was kept in complete darkness in the tunnels for most of his 326 days in captivity.
At the start of his captivity, al-Qadi said he was held in an apartment above ground with several other hostages, but he was soon moved below ground.
“After about two months, the terrorists moved me to a tunnel,” he was quoted by Channel 12 as having said. “I was alone there, with only the terrorists around me. I didn’t know the difference between night and day.”
“The terrorists were masked, and gave me food, mostly slices of bread — there was very little food,” he said. “It was pitch black, and I would put my hands over my eyes to make sure I could still see, it was that dark.”
He was allowed to shower once a month, he said.
Al-Qadi’s brother Jamal was quoted by Channel 12 news earlier on Wednesday as saying that the terrorists who kidnapped al-Qadi shot him in the leg when he refused to tell them where there were Jews.
The network said that in Gaza, al-Qadi’s wound was stitched with a needle and thread, without any anesthetic.
Former Rahat mayor Ata Abu Madighem told Channel 12 on Tuesday that Al-Qadi had witnessed the death of a fellow hostage, a Jewish man with whom he had been held for two months at the start of his captivity, prior to being moved underground. The information could not immediately be verified and there was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces or from the Hostage Families Forum.
“They treated him as an Israeli in every respect,” said Abu Madighem, adding that Al-Qadi “barely saw the sun” while a hostage.
The former mayor told the Wall Street Journal that some 20 Bedouin were killed by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7. Four Bedouin are believed to be among the remaining hostages, one of whom has been confirmed dead by the IDF; two Bedouin teens were freed in November’s weeklong truce.
It is believed that 104 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. The shock assault saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people.
Hamas released 105 civilians during the truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
