A/HRC/12/48 page 237 plastic strips.555 They were taken on foot to an open space half a kilometre away. An hour later, they were taken to a house where they were joined by an estimated 54 or 55 people, who apparently also wore blindfolds. 1129. AD/02 described how they were interrogated in a separate room, individually and at times in groups of two or three. He stated that some of the men, though not him, were beaten during the interrogation and were made to clamber down into trenches or pits, dug in the ground outside the house, big enough to accommodate one person. They were kept in the pits for several hours at a time, handcuffed and blindfolded, with no access to toilets. 1130. Later that night, 15 people – four women and at least 11 children – were brought to the house. They were detained overnight in the corridor outside the room where the men were detained. The next morning, on 4 January, the men, women and children were taken out of the house to an open space. The men remained blindfolded and handcuffed. AD/02 stated that the open space was a military post with many tanks and soldiers. They were all told to sit in the middle of the empty space. A fence of barbed wire was then erected around them. They sat within the barbed enclosure all day and all night in close proximity to the movement and sound of military tanks. 1131. AD/02 stated that 18 to 20 other men were held overnight in an open truck, exposed to the cold and rain. AD/02 knew this from talking to some of the men the following morning.556 1132. On 5 January, 18 to 20 men, not including AD/02, were taken from the military post to an unknown location.557 AD/02 and 35 others were taken to an area described by him as located north of Gaza City and in Israel. They remained handcuffed and blindfolded for an hour and a half. Then a roll-call was taken, their blindfolds removed and they were interrogated by a person who identified himself as an intelligence officer. Shortly afterwards, AD/02 and a few others (exact number not known) were interviewed by a group of people identifying themselves as part of a television crew. AD/02 does not know the name and/or details of the television channel. They were then led to an open space, where they stayed all evening exposed to the rain and cold. Later that night (5–6 January) they were blindfolded and shackled with chains and taken to a location which AD/02 subsequently learned was the Beersheba prison facility. A few hours later, at dawn, their blindfolds and handcuffs were removed. 1133. AD/02 recounted that he was in extreme pain as the handcuffs were very tight, adding to the pain caused by pre-existing injuries to his hands and wrist. Earlier in his life, he had suffered serious burns and the scarring on his hands and arms is evident. There is continued nerve damage to the skin tissue which causes significant pain in cold weather. His gloves were taken away by Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs submission, page 48; see also testimony 21 in Soldiers’ Testimonies…, which supports AD/01’s statement: “we go in, call out to the owner to open, gather all the males, shackled them, gather the family in one room and begin to search”, p. 50. 555 AD/02’s statement is corroborated in a letter sent by various NGOs (ACRI, PCATI, HaMoked, PHR, B’Tselem, Yesh Din and Adalah) to the Military Advocate General on 8 January 2009, available at: http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/28109_eng.pdf. 556 AD/02 indicated that it was later learned that the men had been taken to Ashkelon prison before being brought to the Beersheba Prison, where they were grouped with the others, including AD/02. 557