The Israeli military has said it had dropped charges against five soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee at the high-security Sde Teiman prison, a case that had sparked widespread outrage.

At the time, the army said the soldiers were accused of “acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee’s buttocks with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum”.

Explaining the decision to drop the charges, the military said “procedural difficulties regarding the transfer of information” by Israeli police had “undermined the defendants’ right to a fair trial”.