Israel is the only country in the world which has legalized per law the use of torture and maltreatment during the examination of for political reasons arrested prisoners which means that in Israel prisoners are systematically maltreated and tortured during the interrogation.
Nerws headlines:
- Prisoners to Go on Two-Day Strike to Mark Prisoner Day
- UN calls for release of Palestinian prisoners and inquiry into torture complaints
- Prisoners in Israel start hunger strike
etc...
You will read and hear tens of similar headlines in the media in the coming few days, but what you will hardly read about is facts about Torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisoners.
To shed some light on this subject, here is some excerpts from the very few fact sheets and articles you could find online.
Methods of Torture
- A plastic bag is pulled over the prisoner's head and fixed at the neck.
- “The Ghost – Seat”: The prisoner sits on a little chair ( ca. 25x25 to 30 cm high) for a long time – with his hands bound to the back.
- Withdrawal of sleep and food and playing through day by day very loud music during very strong electric influence of light.
- “The Cage – Seat”: The prisoner is taken into a very small room where he can neither sit properly nor stand.
- The prisoners are hit with hard materials on their naked bodies, as is used electric shock treatment.
- “Shaking”: The prisoner's whole body is shaken so hard that many of them die as a result of this treatment.
- “Hammock”: The prisoner is tied with a rope at the ceiling - opposite him is another rope with a very hard block, mostly together with other tied bricks – which is also fixed at the ceiling. Then both ropes are swung into each other and are let go off. This is very painful and exhausting – just as much for the psyche as for the body – because the body is unprotected and on the other hand the fear to collide with the stones is so great that some prisoners get a coronary by that.
[source: Umbrella Organization Of Arabic Organizations D.A.V. Germany i.Gr. September, 2004]
The methods of torture used by the state of Israel include psychological torture and physical torture which consist of the following:
- Beatings of sensitive organs
- Choking
- Pulling of hair off the body
- Prolonged solitary confinement
- Subjecting detainees to noise, screams, and threats against their families Sleep and food deprivation Forcing a person to stand, hooded and handcuffed, for long periods of time Use of electronic shocks, burnings and beatings with hands, fists, and boots Deprivation of basic hygiene; which results in lice, general discomforts which lead to minor-extreme diseases Verbal threats and insults Fined heavily for any little wrongful action committed
For example, after the assassination of Hamas leader Rantisi in Gaza, some female prisoners returned their food and held a mourning ceremony by saying prayers.
Eight women were fined four hundred NIS each, they weren't permitted to have family visits for two months, and some were placed in solitary confinement.
- Beaten profusely (which authorities claim that the beatings are not a form of punishment but a method of
self-defense.) - The firing of tear gas inside prison cells Denial of medical treatment Confiscation of paper, books, and other personal belongings Stripping naked female prisoners and shackling them spread-eagled to prison beds
[Source: Palestinemonitor]
Stories and Examples:
Like all of the human rights violations commonly inflicted against Palestinians, torture has been used in the West Bank and Gaza not just since the outbreak of their uprising in late 1987, but since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967.
In 1970, both the United Nations and Amnesty International issued reports charging Israeli authorities with practicing torture in the occupied territories. The International Red Cross and Israeli lawyers also reported the use of torture in Israeli prisons in the early and mid-1970s. In 1977, Israeli lawyer Felicia Langer wrote:
"The use of torture during investigations is a method, and I declare it as a lawyer who has dealt with thousands of cases. I have seen the marks of torture on the bodies of hundreds of my clients ... I knew prisoners who went mad as a result of torture ... Many people have died in prisons as a result of torture, or are condemned to a slow death because of the lack of medical treatment. "
Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees became headline news in June 1977, when the London Sunday Times printed a detailed report which concluded that "torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as `rough cops' exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy."
In a two-year period between 1977 and 1979, the US consulate in East Jerusalem sent more than 40 cables to the State Department reporting that torture is a common practice employed by Israelis to extract confessions and to punish Palestinian prisoners. Documentation of Israeli torture, deaths of Palestinians under detention, and other abuses increased in the late 1970s. The absence of human rights organizations in Palestine in the late 1960s and 1970s makes it difficult to estimate the number of Palestinian prisoners who died in prison in the early years of Israeli occupation.
In 1982, reports of torture became widespread following the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, especially at the Ansar detention camp. An incident in 1984, however, became the turning point in precise documentation of torture in Israel. Majid and Subhi Abujumaa were beaten to death by the Israeli secret police (the Shin Bet) following a failed bus hijacking in Gaza. The truth that the cousins were murdered during interrogation, and not during the storming of the bus as the Israeli government had reported, only surfaced after an Israeli newspaper printed a photograph of one of the men being led away in handcuffs. This incident led to the Landau Commission investigation into the practices of the Shin Bet. The Israeli Government Commission documented the use of torture to obtain confessions from detained Palestinians, yet none of the convictions based upon such coerced confessions reversed.
Israeli denials of the use of extreme torture, far exceeding any possible definition of "moderate pressure," became empty lies during the intifada. Even the US State Department was forced to mention in its 1988 Annual Human Rights Report that not only had eight Palestinians died in detention, but that Israeli authorities often obtained "confessions" through "physical and psychological pressure."
The most commonly reported methods of torture in the occupied territories include starvation, sleep deprivation, hoods, beatings, humiliation, confinement in specially constructed cells, forced standing, and sexual harassment and abuse. There also are well documented reports of electric shock torture, conducted usually at AlFara'a prison near Nablus. As a result of electric shock treatment under interrogation in 1987, Izzo AlAwawdeh still suffers from "converse blindness."
Three main categories of physical abuse against Palestinian detainees are torture during interrogation, withholding medical treatment, and the use of excessive force in response to demonstrations. All three have caused deaths during the intifada.
[Stephen Sosebee is a free-lance writer from Kent, OH presently living in Gaza. October 1991, Page 41 Special Report: Speaking About the Unspeakable: Officially Sanctioned Torture]
Prisoners in Numbers
- 7200 prisoners,
- 87% from the West Bank,
- 11% from Gaza and 2% from Israel,
- 2300 of them have been already sentenced,
- 3700 are in custody and 1200 are in administrative detention – from these 419 have been held in prison just before the Oslo Agreement.
- 95% of all prisoners are civilians. Occasionally the whole families are arrested – for this more than 12 prisons have been built extra.
- Between 8 – 10 prisoners are stuck in one cell.
- More than 40 prisoners are chronic ill and need urgently medical help.
- 97 prisoners have been for longer than 20 years in prison –
- More than 2000 children have been taken into custody, 470 are waiting for their trials and 206 of them have spent their 18th birthday in custody. 22 of them are in administrative detention, further 286 children have been sentenced.
- 250 women have been taken into custody, from these 100 are still in prison., 18 of them are mothers of 75 children, 4 children have been born in prison – the birth being eyed by just watching guards and without any medical help.
- 96% of all prisoners have been tortured several times – of them 85% with “Shaba- methods”,
- 95% have been prevented to sleep,
- 87% have been forced to wait for several hours in the “cage position”.
[Umbrella Organization Of Arabic Organizations D.A.V. Germany i.Gr. September, 2004]
Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). As the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians detained forms approximately 40% of the total male Palestinian population in the OPT.
Under military regulations in force in the OPT, a child over the age of 16 is considered an adult, contrary to the defined age of a child as under 18 in the Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory. In practice, Palestinian children may be charged and sentenced in military courts beginning at the age of 12.
- Between the ages of 12-14, children can be sentenced for offences for a period of up to six months – meaning that a child accused of throwing a stone can be sent to prison for six months;
- After the age of 14, Palestinian children are tried as adults, in violation of international law;
- There are no juvenile courts and children are often held and serve their sentences in cells with criminal prisoners and are often not separated from adults, also in violation of international law.
Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in September of 2000, 128 Palestinian women have been imprisoned in Israel, twenty of whom are mothers and two of whom have given birth while in prison. Upon arriving at the prisons, often after being severely abused and dishonored in front of her peers and family, Israeli officials proceed with their sense of an interrogation method.
[palestinemonitor]
[Via: Palestine Blog]
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