Arizona-Made Axon Stun Guns Still Reach Israeli Security Forces Despite Torture Allegations

Essa was 43 and missing both feet, amputated after an Israeli missile struck his home, when soldiers dragged him into a section of Ofer Prison known among detainees as Hell's Wing, according to his account documented by the Guardian and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. He says he was shot with rubber bullets, tied up, and then shocked repeatedly with a stun gun. More than a year and a half after his October 2025 release, the scars remain. The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims assessed the paired marks on his skin and said their proximity suggests repeated shocks delivered while he was tightly restrained.

Essa was arrested in the Jabalia refugee camp in January 2024. The investigation identifies the weapon likely used against him as a product of Axon Enterprise, the American company formerly known as Taser International, which has sold electroshock devices into Israel since at least 1995.

The contracts

Axon's Israeli footprint is documented in distributor paperwork. In 2016, a company called MR Hunter signed a 13m shekel (roughly £3m) contract to supply Israeli security agencies with the Taser X26P model and accessories. By 2025, Axon listed a second distributor, the Goren-Kidon Group, whose stated clients include the Israeli police, the Ministry of National Security, the Ministry of Defence and the Israel Prison Service. Axon held a conference in Israel in June 2025 to showcase newer electroshock models, attended by representatives of Israeli security agencies, according to the investigation.

The devices are manufactured in Arizona and exported under a "crime control" category that falls under U.S. Department of Commerce oversight. Export licenses under that framework are supposed to account for evidence that an importing government "may have violated internationally recognised human rights."

A military's own finding

Essa's account is not isolated. Three other detainees released since 2024 allege they were tortured with Axon weapons, though the investigation provides no independently detailed accounts for those cases. More concretely, an Israeli military advocate general, Itai Ofir, investigated five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention camp in July 2024. That investigation found the soldiers had also used a Taser weapon on the detainee, injuring him badly enough to require hospitalization.

The UN Committee Against Torture reported in November 2025 that abuse inside Israeli detention facilities, including electric shocks, had worsened.

"Torture and ill-treatment had escalated sharply" since October 7, 2023, the committee found.

The pattern is not new to U.S. diplomats. A 2014 State Department human rights report noted that Israeli police commissioner Yohanan Danino had ordered a temporary suspension of Taser use in 2013 after a video leaked showing an Israeli citizen shocked repeatedly.

An IDF spokesperson told the Guardian and ARIJ that abuse of detainees is strictly prohibited and that restraints are used "only in exceptional circumstances" consistent with Israeli and international law. Amnesty International has called for restrictions on exports of electroshock devices to Israel. Axon's continued distribution agreements, and the export license that permits them, remain the open question at the center of the file.