'He’s broken, in a state of mental torture,' says father of Bedouin-Israeli hostage Hisham al-Sayed after son released from decade of Hamas captivity

The father of the recently released Bedouin-Israeli hostage Hisham al-Sayed, says his son is mentally broken after spending a decade in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. Al-Sayed who was “diagnosed with schizophrenia and a personality disorder, among other conditions,” had been held in Hamas captivity since April 2015 when he illegally entered the Gaza Strip from Israeli territory. 

“He’s broken, in a state of mental torture. He may have been held alone. He does not speak,” his father, Sha’ban al-Sayed, told Israeli media. 

Al-Sayed was one of six Israeli hostages who were released by Hamas on Saturday. He was held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip since April 2015.

“Hisham feels very bad. He is broken and may have been held alone. It is strange for him to see people,” the father revealed. “He does not speak. He has no voice, he was in a very difficult place and his situation is very difficult,” the father continued. 

“He is not well, he was not in our world. A kind of Tarzan after living for 10 years with animals. He does not communicate.”

Hamas did not subject al-Sayed to the same humiliating release events as has become customary with other Israeli hostages released since last month. Hamas officially claimed that it had refrained “out of respect for the Arabs of Israel.”

However, Sha’ban accuses Hamas of lying and trying to conceal his son’s poor health. 

“Hamas are liars, they are not as respectful as they claimed when they released him without ceremony. They didn’t want people to see what state he was in, and that’s why there was no ceremony. If they had any respect for people, they would have released him a long time ago. What respect?” he stated with anger towards Hamas. 

The father compared his son’s current condition with how he was before being held in Hamas captivity. 

“Before [captivity] he would talk, he would write,” the father al-Sayed recalled.

“He made wrong decisions, but he would communicate. Now we have a person who has disappeared. He tries to talk and to share, but he doesn’t succeed. He says a lot of incomprehensible things. He speaks in a whisper, maybe out of fear. I believe he is in a state of mental torture.”  

In June 2022, Hamas released a propaganda video of an ill al-Sayed wearing an oxygen mask. At the time, Hamas warned that al-Sayed’s health was declining and offered to release him in exchange for an unspecified number of convicted terrorists from Israeli jails. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett condemned Hamas and said that “spreading the clip of a sick man is despicable and an act of desperation.”

For years before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel had unsuccessfully attempted to secure the release of al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu, an Ethiopian Israeli who also suffers from mental illness and illegally entered Gaza in September 2014.