Hamas captors cynically gave Sagui Dekel-Chen earrings for his wife on news she gave birth

Dekel-Chen did not believe the terrorists about the birth of his daughter until the IDF confirmed it was true.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

As a form of psychological torture, Hamas terrorists informed Sagui Dekel-Chen about the birth of his daughter, gave him earrings, and instructed him to give them to his wife.

Dekel-Chen did not believe the terrorists about the birth of his daughter until the IDF confirmed it was true.

He had been injured in the shoulder but told the soldiers to disregard his wounds, saying, “What’s most important is meeting my family.”

Sagui Dekel-Chen, Yair Horn, and Sasha Troufanov were released together on Saturday after 498 days in captivity.

Horn and Dekel-Chen were held together, while Troufanov was kept in isolation during his captivity.

The three were held captive in Khan Younis, just a few hundred meters from where they were abducted at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7th.

Initially, they were confined in tunnels before being moved to apartments.

Horn knew that his brother had also been taken hostage, and shortly after his capture, he asked, “When will they release Eitan?”

When the IDF informed Troufanov that his father, Vitaly, had been murdered, he broke down in tears.

Although Dekel-Chen, Horn, and Troufanov showed signs of severe weight loss and were weak and pale, they could stand and walk independently. They appeared healthier than the three hostages released the previous week, whose emaciated appearances were compared to Holocaust survivors.

Upon their release, the hostages were given small amounts of food, including tea with sugar, applesauce, a few biscuits, and vitamin B1 (thiamine) to prevent refeeding syndrome—a potentially fatal condition that can occur when food is reintroduced too quickly to the body of someone severely malnourished.

The hostages had appeared in videos created by Hamas for propaganda purposes and psychological warfare against Israelis.

Horn was coerced into mentioning his brother Eitan in one of these videos.

Regarding the release of Troufanov, a Russian citizen, Russian press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, “Moscow praises the release of Alexander Troufanov in Palestine.”

Peskov also thanked Hamas for agreeing to release him.