"They hooked him to a car battery": Former hostage reveals Hamas’ shocking torture methods

A year and a half after his release in one of the first hostage deals, former captive Ron Krivoy has broken his silence, revealing the horrific abuse he and fellow hostages endured at the hands of Hamas. Krivoy, who was 26 years old when he was abducted from the Nova music festival on Simchat Torah and taken to Gaza, shared chilling testimonies of torture and survival.

Krivoy’s story is extraordinary. During his captivity, he managed to briefly escape his captors, wandering Gaza alone for several days before being recaptured. "At the stage when I was alone outside, no one saw me, and then once someone did, it didn’t end well," he recalled. "The people who caught me, ordinary Gazans, beat me up severely. It’s not something simple, I experienced something brutal... they took out all their frustration on me."

Eventually, Krivoy was freed in one of the earliest hostage exchange deals, about a month after his kidnapping. Speaking out a year and a half later, he revealed that he was held alongside IDF soldier Matan Angrest, who suffered horrifying abuse while in captivity.

In a conversation broadcast on Israel's Channel 12, Krivoy recounted his experiences to Angrest’s parents, Anat and Haggai. He described how Matan was seriously wounded on the day of his abduction and was subjected to horrific torture by his captors.

Krivoy revealed: "The interrogations he endured began already within Israeli territory. They hooked him to a car battery and tried to wake him up by electrocuting him. When he woke up, the first thing he saw was the battery electrocuting him, and then he lost consciousness again. No matter what they did, he was already unconscious. They couldn't interrogate him. He wasn't in a condition to speak because he was so severely wounded. His injuries were very serious."

Krivoy went on to describe the appalling conditions in captivity: "We were in a very small space underground. We didn’t even have a floor — just sand and moldy mattresses. It was a cage barely one and a half meters by one and a half meters, and we had to lie down. You couldn’t stand. There was no height, no toilets, barely any food. We were five people sharing one small plate with some canned food and one pita we divided among ourselves. I was there for 51 days and lost nine kilograms."

Recalling his release, Krivoy shared a surreal moment: "The person who came to release us asked, ‘Who is the Russian among you?’ I was scared to answer at first, but then he asked again. I realized I was the only one who looked Russian, so I raised my hand. He told me, ‘Tomorrow you’re going home.’"

Krivoy credits his survival and freedom to one factor alone: his Russian citizenship. "I’m here because of a miracle. I know that if I didn’t have Russian citizenship, I would probably still be down there in that tunnel with Matan today. Putin is the one who got me out. If not for him, I wouldn’t be here today. We are completely abandoned."