[WCUSP] Recommended: "Palestinian officials allege torture"

[katharlow at aol.com]

katharlow at aol.com recommends this article from The Christian Science Monitor

Dear friends, 
   This is an article about recent, but supposedly banned, Israeli use of torture used against government ministers of the Palestine Authority.
 - Katharina

======================= ADVERTISEMENT ==============================

Sign up for the Monitor Treeless Edition!
http://www.csmonitortreeless.com?dmc=E35W191

==================================================================== 

Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0918/p07s02-wome.html

Headline:  Palestinian officials allege torture
Byline:  Ilene R. Prusher Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 09/18/2006

(RAMALLAH, WEST BANK)A government minister in the Palestinian Authority, who was arrested 
and held by Israeli authorities for more than six weeks this summer, 
says that during his interrogation he was tied for hours in a painful 
position known as the shabah. The technique, which Israeli security 
officials had argued was an effective way to put pressure on a suspect, 
was banned by Israel's Supreme Court in 1999.
An East Jerusalem lawyer says that two other top-level officials in the 
Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, who were arrested in the aftermath of 
the June 25 kidnapping by Hamas militants of an Israeli army corporal, 
have been subjected to the same treatment.
"For five, six, seven hours, they would take me and tie my hands behind 
my back like this, and with my feet up, in the shabah," says Minister 
of Labor Mohammed Barghouthi, recalling his interrogation in an 
interview in his office.
"To go from the minister's office to a shabah seat, it was quite a 
shock," says Barghouthi, who is not a Hamas member and says he was 
offered the ministry appointment primarily for his management 
experience: He founded a successful advertising firm and has been a 
school superintendent. "It caused a lot of pain in my neck and back, 
but the psychological pain is much worse."
The General Security Service (GSS), also known as the Shin Bet, 
responded by e-mail that "all the interrogations of the ISA (Israeli 
Security Agency) [including Barghouti's] are executed according to the 
laws of the Supreme Court of Israel."
In 1999, a nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed 
methods of physical force that were routinely used by Shin Bet. 
Techniques banned in the decision included holding and tying the 
prisoner in painful positions, violent shaking, sleep deprivation, 
covering the head with a sack, and playing loud music.
Senior officials in Israel's security establishment opposed the 
decision because, they said, it could weaken investigative powers by 
disallowing techniques that might be instrumental in getting suspects 
to confess. Exceptions may be made, the court decided, if someone is 
suspected of having information about an imminent terrorist attack.
"But none of these men is considered a ticking bomb," Eyal Hareuveni, 
spokesman for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, says of 
the Palestinian cabinet members and members of parliament who were 
arrested. "The Supreme Court said that in cases of a 'ticking bomb,' 
investigators can use methods of interrogation that we interpret as 
torture. The number of complaints over the use of this decreased since 
1999, but we still get dozens of complaints every year."
Jessica Montell, the executive director of Btselem, the Israeli 
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, says 
the Supreme Court decision made a significant impact, but that it is 
clear the method is still used.
"Since 1999, the numbers of people subjected to physical force have 
gone way down, but there are enough cases to be worrying," she says. 
"Before 1999, it was just an assembly line of torture, some lighter, 
some more serious. Now the people who are being subjected to torture or 
to other physical abuse are people who have information that the GSS 
wants access to. It doesn't justify it, but it's much more focused."
It isn't clear what kind of information investigators expected to get 
from Barghouthi. "All the questions were about my role as a minister, 
how I became a minister," he says.
Barghouthi says he was never beaten, but on the day of his arrest he 
was shackled, blindfolded, and had his cellphone confiscated. He says 
that the incarceration included 35 days in a windowless, solitary cell 
in Jerusalem's Russian Compound. "Night and day, I never knew what time 
it was," he says. "I never saw my face. I never saw the sun. I had no 
change of clothes."
He says interrogators threatened to arrest his wife or his father if he 
didn't cooperate. By the time of his release, he says he had lost 26 
pounds.
Barghouthi and Fadi Kawasmi, the lawyer, say two other officials were 
subjected to similar treatment in interrogation: Minister for Jerusalem 
Affairs Khaled Abu Arafe and Deputy Prime Minister Nasser ed-Din 
es-Shah. Mr. Kawasmi, who is Mr. Abu Arafe's attorney, says his client 
and Dr. Shah told him of the treatment during visits he made to them 
while incarcerated.
One of the arguments Kawasmi used to secure their release was that 
Israel had not acted until now as if being a member of Hamas's Change 
and Reform Party was illegal. Israel, he points out, allowed the 
Palestinian elections to take place in January and for the 
Hamas-affiliated candidates to run in East Jerusalem, which has 
officially been annexed to Israel.
"You let them participate," Kawasmi says. "You can't come and arrest 
them now and accuse them of being members of a parliament chosen by an 
election in which you allowed them to run."
(c) Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor.  All rights reserved. 

Click here to email this story to a friend: 
http://www.csmonitor.com/cgibin/send-story?2006/0918/p07s02-wome.txt

The Christian Science Monitor-- an independent daily newspaper providing context and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social trends.  Online at http://www.csmonitor.com

Click here to order a free sample copy of the print edition of the Monitor: 
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html


======================= ADVERTISEMENT ==============================

Sign up to have the Monitor's headlines sent directly to your inbox.
http://www.csmonitor.com/email

====================================================================