Keith Siegel, who spent 484 days as a hostage, described the physical and psychological distress he endured, in an interview with The New York Times.
Hamas gunmen picked the female hostage out from a cluster of captives in an apartment in Gaza. They threatened her with a pistol and led her away into a separate room. Then they commanded Keith Siegel to follow.
It had been about a month since Mr. Siegel, the woman and roughly 250 others were kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attack that set off the war with Israel. The conditions of their captivity in Gaza were unbearable, Mr. Siegel said. Meals were intermittent. Water was scarce. And any failure to follow their captors’ instructions risked violent retribution.
As Mr. Siegel stepped into the room, panic washed over him: He found himself in the audience of a “medieval-style” trial by torture, he said.
The woman had been bound, and the guards were beating her with primitive tools. They demanded that she “tell the truth,” Mr. Siegel said. He was instructed to assist with getting a confession.
“I was told to go into the room and to tell the person that the torturing will continue until they admit what they were being accused of,” he said.
The episode was one of many that defined the horrific experience that Mr. Siegel, an Israeli American originally from North Carolina, and his fellow hostages endured in captivity. Mr. Siegel was released on Feb. 1, after 484 days as a hostage, as part of a short-lived cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Another 59 hostages remain in Gaza, with around 35 presumed by the Israeli government to be dead.
