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The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.
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Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges' orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary 'iron fist policy'.

But Professor Raid Neuerat, who teaches political science at the West Bank's Nablus University, told how PA security men handcuffed him at gunpoint in front of his wife and four children, pulled a thick, soiled hood over his head then bundled him into their car. It is a five-minute drive from his house to the local Jenaid prison – but it lasted four hours.

'Most of that time they beat me,' said Prof Neuerat, 39. 'They were hitting my head and spine with their rifle butts. By the time I arrived I had lost my sight in both eyes and could not move my legs.'

Prof Neuerat, like five other victims interviewed by The Mail on Sunday, said he has never been in Hamas.

'I was lucky,' he said. 'The damage to my central nervous system was reparable. I was told my crime was something I said on television – that I had called the Hamas takeover of Gaza just that, a takeover, instead of a "coup".'

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