Amit Soussana, one of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, has revealed that fellow captive Liri Albag saved her life while in Gaza.
In a powerful interview with Channel 12 Soussana, who was freed through a hostage deal in November 2023, recounted the torturous weeks she spent in captivity which saw her “chained like an animal” and threatened with execution.
She described how, during the first weeks of her captivity, she was subjected to severe abuse.
"They chained me like an animal," she said, recalling the chilling scene where her legs were shackled together with a metal chain and fixed to a window before she was left in isolation with two guards. "For days, I was kept in a small room, tied up, with no hope of escape," she recalled.
The psychological and physical torture escalated when her captors, convinced that Soussana was an IDF officer, demanded she confess.
They beat her with sticks, threatened her with knives, and pointed a gun at her head, demanding that she admit her military status.
"I was told I had 40 minutes to confess the truth, or they would kill me," Soussana went on.
But, in the face of death, it was Liri Albag, who emerged as her unlikely saviour.
According to Soussana, Albag, with her calm and persuasive demeanour, spoke with the captors and convinced them that she was not in the military.
“I don’t know if they would have killed me or not,” said a visibly emotional Soussana. “But as far as I’m concerned, you [Liri] saved my life.”
Albag was finally released after 477 days in captivity alongside three other female hostages as part of the unfolding ceasefire deal.
It comes after Soussana shared an even more painful part of her story – the alleged sexual assault she endured at the hands of one of the captors – in an interview with The New York Times last year.
She said that one of the men who was holding her hostage repeatedly asked about her sex life and when her period was due.
The same man later allegedly pointed a gun at her head and “forced” her “to commit a sexual act on him” in the child’s bedroom where she was held.
A Hamas spokesperson has denied her claim, saying: “For us, the human body, and especially that of the woman, is sacred.”
They added that the terror group’s strict religious beliefs “forbade any mistreatment of any human being, regardless of his sex, religion or ethnicity”.
