Israeli hostages rescued from Hamas have described the brutal torture they suffered in captivity, including being handcuffed for months and left to swelter in the desert heat wrapped in blankets.
Andrey Kozlov, 27, was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival on October 7 when captured by a terrorist group He said he suffered terrifying eight months in their captivity in Gaza. Interview with CNN Friday.
Kozlov recalled seeing “a car full of men in green suits” as he and hundreds of other people ran through the woods to escape.
“And they are firing into the air, they are already firing at us,” he said in broken English.
On the first day, the guard “pulled the cloth over my eyes and made hand gestures indicating that he was going to kill me the next day and film it,” pointing at his watch and clicking the camera shutter, using his finger as a gun.
The next day, the mentally ill guard had a new message: “I love you,” he signaled.
Kozlov is The Washington Post He remembers thinking, “What? Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
For the next three days, Kozlov was tied with a rope and then chained until mid-December.
As punishment, he was covered with “a very thick blanket in the middle of May” and left out in the heat for long periods of time.
Kozlov recalled being punished for random actions such as washing his hands before eating: “One time a guard told him: ‘I told you not to do that.'”
The psychological torture included being told that their families had forgotten about them, while masked guards kept watch over them, carrying rifles and “big knives.”
One of the guards had a “split personality,” Kozlov said.
“He told us, ‘I have two faces. One is good. But I don’t want to show the other face. Like I could kill you.'”
Kozlov said the guards “told us many times that Israel wanted to kill us,” and when the IDF came to rescue him and the three other hostages on June 8, he initially wondered if they were going to kill him.
Kozlov, Noah Al-Ghamani26, Almog Meir 1 month 21 days Shlomi Ziv, 41, was rescued in Nuseira. He fled to Israel.
A doctor who treated the group said they had endured “harsh and gruelling experiences” and were beaten and abused “almost daily”.
Kozlov now considers the day of his rescue, June 8, as another birthday, adding that the mission was like a scene from “an incredible movie.”
He said there was much he could not talk about yet, including about the other hostages he saw: “I don’t want to talk about it, because it’s painful and it’s dangerous for them.”
“I understand I was a really lucky guy,” he told The Washington Post. “I feel healthy, but I have some suppressed emotions.”
His mother, Evgenia, told the outlet: “I was very scared to see what kind of person had returned, but after a few minutes I realised it was my Andrei. He hadn’t changed.”
Kozlov’s focus now is on the remaining 120 hostages. Hamas kidnapped more than 230 Israelis and other foreigners on October 7, killing more than 1,200 Israelis.
“We need to bring them home as soon as possible,” he told Israeli officials. “I don’t know how, but we need to do it soon.”
