Rescued hostage recounts new details of brutal torture under Hamas — shackled for months in chains: ‘I was a really lucky guy’
An Israeli hostage rescued from Hamas has revealed the brutal torture he endured while in captivity, including being shackled for months and left sweltering under blankets in the desert heat.
Andrey Kozlov, 27, was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 when he was captured by the terrorist group and spent eight horrific months held by them in Gaza, he said in an interview with CNN Friday.
Kozlov recalled running through the forest with hundreds of others trying to flee the event when he saw “a car full of guys in green”
“And they shoot in the air, they shoot already on us,” he said in broken English.
On his first day, his captor “took the fabric from my eyes and showed me with signs” that he planned to kill him the next day and film it. The guard pointed to his watch, made a camera shutter sound and used his fingers as guns.
The next day, the deranged guard had a new message: “I love you,” he signaled.
Kozlov told the Washington Post that he remembers thinking, “What? Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
For the next three days, Kozlov was tied up with rope and then, until mid-December, was in chains.
As punishment, he was covered in “really thick blankets, in the middle of May,” and left in the heat for long periods of time.
Punishment came for arbitrary things, Kozlov recalled, including washing his hands before eating. “‘I told you not to do this,’” a guard said at one point to him.
Psychological torture included being told that their families had forgotten about them. Masked guards would watch over them, holding rifles and “big knives.”
One guard had a “split personality,” Kozlov said.
“He told us, ‘I have two faces: A good one, but I don’t want you to see the second face – like, I can kill you.’”
Kozlov said a guard “told us a lot that Israel wants to kill us.” When Israeli Defense Forces came to rescue him and three other hostages on June 8, he thought they were actually going to kill him at first.
Kozlov, Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21 and Shlomi Ziv, 41, were rescued in Nuseirat and evacuated to Israel.
The doctor who treated the group said they endured a “harsh, harsh experience” and were beaten and abused “almost every day.”
Kozlov now considers the day he was rescued — June 8 — as another birthday for him. The mission felt like a scene from “an incredible film,” he added.
He said there is still a lot he can’t bring himself to talk about, including the other hostages he saw. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s painful and it’s gonna be dangerous for them.”
“I understand I was a really lucky guy,” he told the Washington Post. “I feel I am healthy, but some emotions are locked.”
His mother, Evgeniia, told the outlet, “I was very afraid to see what person returned to me. But I saw in a few minutes that he is my Andrey. He didn’t change.”
Now, Kozlov’s focus is the remaining 120 hostages. Hamas kidnapped over 230 Israelis and other foreign nationals on Oct. 7, and killed over 1,200 Israelis.
“We need to bring them home as soon as possible,” he has told Israeli officials. “I don’t know how. But we need to do this immediately.”
