Freed hostage Sasha Troufanov revealed Thursday that he was sexually harassed while being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in the early weeks of the war, when he was kept above ground inside a cage.
Troufanov said one of the terrorists guarding him repeatedly tried to encourage him to do a sexual act on himself. In an interview with the BBC, he also testified that a hidden camera filmed him when the militants allowed him to shower. "I noticed it and I took the shower trying to avoid my private parts towards this angle, but I had to do it because I needed to shower." he recalled.
Sasha, who is engaged to his partner Sapir, who was also held hostage, told ynet last October that the first two weeks in captivity were the worst. “I didn’t speak at all. I knew Sapir was also a hostage. I had to be strong,” he said. “I didn’t know what was happening with my parents or my grandmother. Only when I heard on the radio that my mother, my grandmother and Sapir had been released, that was a happy moment. I was at the end of my strength. I no longer believed I would get out of there alive.”
After being taken down into the tunnels, he experienced what he described as dark moments. “I was alone, sometimes for months. Completely alone. There were moments when I would bang my head against the wall just to feel something. Underground, only the dead are there. You feel dead, buried, without any light,” he told ynet.
In the BBC interview, Troufanov also addressed the second phase of former President Donald Trump’s plan and the reconstruction of Gaza. He said there are no steps that guarantee an attack like October 7 will not happen again.
"Rebuilding Gaza, after what happened in the war, is understandable. But first of all we need to make sure that the people of Gaza will stop trying to hurt Israel. The terrorists were telling me: 'We will do this again and again.' Rebuilding Gaza and opening the Rafah crossing is in vain as it will never solve the real problem. We need to find a way to make this hatred and encouragement of terrorist activity stop." he said.
Troufanov concluded the BBC interview by saying he is looking forward to dancing at his wedding in a few weeks. In the meantime, he is using crutches following surgery on his leg. "It's a victory: overcoming hate and fear and saying to ourselves: 'We will build life together and we will continue.'" he said.
Troufanov was released in the hostage deal in February 2025, after 498 days in captivity in Gaza. His fiancee Sapir was abducted with him from his family home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his mother, Yelena, and his grandmother, Irina.
Troufanov immigrated to Israel with his parents at age 3 and grew up, studied and was educated in Kibbutz Nir Oz. He studied electrical engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and, after completing his studies, moved to central Israel and began working for Amazon. Sasha’s father, Vitaly, was killed on Saturday, October 7.