“I was screaming and crying. It was the most painful thing I have ever faced. My feet were blue and I couldn’t walk for three days,” he said. Bruises on his soles were still visible three weeks later.

After the ordeal, Helou, 22, went to a barbershop to get his ravaged hair cropped. Now shorn of his one-inch spikes, he has been given no reason by the police for his detention and beating. But his experience is shared by other young men in Gaza City.

Over the past month, at least 40 men have had their heads shaved by Hamas officers in a pattern of intimidation and abuse aimed at enforcing Islamic mores governing personal appearance, according to the human rights organisation Al Mezan. The individuals have been targeted for sporting “western” hairstyles or wearing low-slung jeans that reveal underwear. But one, to whom the Guardian spoke, insisted he was guilty of neither “offence”, but was beaten and shaved simply as a mechanism of social control.