CNN
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Time Gaza The sunshine was extremely hot. Andrey Kozlov He said Hamas fighters covered him with a blanket and left him to sweat. When he asked about his family, they said they had forgotten about him. When they removed the blindfold, they said they were going to kill him and film the killing.
The 27-year-old said he suffered severe psychological and some physical abuse at the hands of Hamas, and he cannot explain what happened to him and two other hostages during their eight-month captivity in Gaza.
Kozlov, a Russian-Israeli, said he was “tied with a rope for three days, then chained until mid-December” after being removed from the Nova music festival on October 7. Over the course of the months, he was subjected to “creative” forms of punishment, with one guard “telling us many times that Israel wants to kill us” and that they were a problem Israel was trying to eliminate.
Kozlov tried hard not to believe the lies, so when Israeli soldiers stormed the building where he was being held last month, he believed they had been sent to kill him.
Instead, a remarkable rescue operation brought him, two others and Noor al-Ghamani, who had been held in a nearby building, back to their home, but left a trail of destruction in its wake: At least 274 Palestinians were killed in the raid and subsequent firefight with Hamas fighters, according to Gaza authorities.
In an interview with CNN, Kozlov detailed his months of captivity in Gaza, the psychological torture he endured, the threats he faced, and his hope that Israel and Hamas will reach a deal to release the remaining hostages.
Abed Khaled/Reuters
People walk through rubble after an Israeli military attack in the area where hostages were rescued, in Nuseira refugee camp in central Gaza, June 9, 2024.
Kozlov was working security at the Nova festival when his shift was coming to an end when Hamas fighters began streaming across the border. He’d immigrated to Israel from Russia two years earlier and taken the job because it was “easy money.” When his shift was over, Kozlov thought, “I’ll go home and sleep and everything will be fine. But it wasn’t.”
Minutes later, Kozlov was sprinting through the woods, “maybe 200 or 300 of us,” panicked by gunfire and gruesome videos of nearby violence that had already circulated online. But when we stumbled out into a field, Kozlov recalled in broken English, “there was a car full of guys in green uniforms, and they were firing into the air, and they were already firing at us.”
Hiding in the bushes didn’t help: he was quickly found and taken to Gaza, where he was held in several locations along with Almog Meir Jan and Shlomi Ziv before finally being rescued in Nuseirat, in the heart of the exclave.
On the first day, his captor “pulled the cloth from my eyes and showed me with signs what he intended to do.” The man pointed to himself and said “me,” then tapped his watch and said “tomorrow,” then pointed to Kozlov and said “you,” then made a camera sign, clicked the shutter and said “shoot,” then formed a gun with his fingers and pulled the trigger and said “I’ll kill you.”
Kozlov thought that day would be his last, but as time passed, the fear gradually faded. After a few days, he realized, “They probably aren’t going to kill us.” They explained to Kozlov, again using sign language, that they wanted to exchange him: “You go to Israel. Our people go to Gaza and the West Bank.”
For the first three months, Kozlov said, the sounds of Israeli bombing were constant. “Every time we heard a bomb we were scared. Every time we started hiding in a corner,” he said, adding that his captors laughed and asked him what he was scared of.
Marco Jurica/Reuters
Kozlov returned to Israel after the rescue mission on June 8, 2024.
Kozlov said they were moved from house to house multiple times and were given adequate food in some places. After he was removed from his chains in December, he was given the opportunity to do exercises such as “squats and push-ups” in some of the places where he was being held.
But he said he suffered long-term psychological abuse from guards who wore masks, carried Kalashnikovs and “big knives”, and that the lead guard, he said, had a “split personality” and would often “go crazy”.
“He has two personalities,” Kozlov said. “He told us, ‘I have two faces. One is a good face. But the other face I don’t want to show you. It’s like I can kill you.'”
Some mornings, the guard is friendly and invites him to play cards, but other mornings, Kozlov says, “I wake up and I recognize the second face and don’t talk to him at all.”
Kozlov also allegedly faced punishment for his own indulgences: Once, after he washed his hands with drinking water before a meal, a guard “noticed and said, ‘I told you not to do that.'” The guard then ordered someone to cover Kozlov with a very thick blanket “in the middle of May” and leave him out in the heat for an hour and a half.
Kozlov’s testimony is consistent with that of other rescued hostages: a doctor who treated him and three others rescued by Israeli forces described them as having been beaten and their captivity as a “harsh, gruelling experience, with severe abuse almost daily.”
“There have been periods when there was very little food available, and periods when it was a little better, but overall the combination of psychological stress, malnutrition and not having enough food has a significant impact on health,” Dr Itay Pesak told CNN last month.
Still, Kozlov considers himself “lucky.” He said he met other hostages during his eight months in Gaza, but “I don’t want to talk about them… it’s painful and it’s dangerous for them.” Were they worse off than he was? “Yes, it was.”
As a result, Kozlov urged Israeli authorities to “try to understand how we (the hostages) have felt all this time. We need to bring them home as soon as possible. I don’t know how, but it needs to happen soon.”
Optimism Ceasefire agreement for hostage release But tensions have faded this week after Hamas warned that Israeli actions in Gaza could jeopardize the negotiations. Last week, a U.S. official told CNN that a framework agreement was “in place,” and an Israeli official said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had authorized negotiators to begin detailed talks, suggesting a breakthrough was possible.
Talks resumed last Friday in the Qatari capital, Doha. Over the weekend, Hamas agreed to compromise on a major sticking point for Israel: that Netanyahu’s government commit to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza before signing any agreement. But a statement from Netanyahu’s office on Sunday outlined several “principles” that Israel is not prepared to abandon, including resuming fighting in Gaza “until all war objectives have been achieved.”
For Kozlov, the dates of his capture and his rescue marked milestones in his life: October 7 marked his second “birthday”, June 8 his third, and he hopes that each of the remaining 120 hostages will be able to celebrate their own birthdays.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the date of Kozlov’s third “birthday” and that he was rescued on June 8th.
