See no evil: Canadian government denies torture in Israel
Jesse Rosenfeld, 21 March 2008
Extracts:
"The Israelis tied my hands, blindfolded and then beat me all the way to the interrogation center. I was then cuffed to a chair for four days where interrogators prevented me from sleeping. I was tied in painful stress positions, and on one occasion the agents grabbed me while I was cuffed to the chair and shook me severely, I passed out when they started shaking me by the head," says "Samer" a former student activist at Birzeit University who was arrested in 2006.
- Canada had Israel and the United States listed as offenders in a training manual for diplomats about torture, the two countries were promptly dropped on 19 January.
- Israeli human rights group B’Tselem wrote, "We are very concerned about the Canadian government removing Israel from this list".
- The canadian government says it has no record of receiving B’Tselem’s letter.
- Canada refused to comment as to why Israel was originally in the manual and then taken out.
- Amnesty International Canada: "We are disappointed that Canada would take countries off the list for diplomatic reasons".
- B’Tselem jointly released a report with the Israeli individual liberties group, Hamoked, that documents the pervasiveness of Israeli torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees. The document reported that two-thirds of interview subjects said they had experienced beatings, painful binding, humiliation and denial of basic needs at the hands of security forces from the moment of arrest.
- Gadi Zohar, former Chief of Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank and former head of Israeli Army Intelligence’s Terror Research Department, "When you have to make decisions about saving lives and someone suffering, then one should suffer." Zohar says Palestinian accusations of torture are ‘propaganda’.
- The story of violent and tormenting ill treatment by Israeli officials during detention is common in the occupied territories.
- Little change after the 1999 Israeli High court ruling that partly barred torture.
- 90 percent of Palestinian detainees have been tortured or ill-treated and the main switch after 1999 was from more physical to more psychological forms of torture.
- Israeli courts allow for "physical pressure" to be applied
- Agents from the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) arrested a mother and sister, threatening to rape them if a detainee didn’t confess.
- Hammad Selaman was charged with being a member of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’ political movement – still an illegal organization according to the illegal occupation. He was blindfolded, put on the floor of an army jeep, kicked and beaten all the way to the detention center. The soldiers unleashed dogs on him in the jeep. After arriving at the center he was taken to a small room where soldiers beat him again. "I was then taken to a bigger room where I was blindfolded and cuffed to a chair for 10 hours waiting for interrogation. I could hear other prisoners screaming from the torture."
- Canadian politicians, including the NDP, distance themselves from publicly confronting Israel
- Israeli torture doesn’t end in the interrogation room but continues in prison.
- Jihad Maher Shalapi was 16 when he was arrested at Nablus’ Huwwara checkpoint, beaten all the way to interrogation and then severely beaten after refusing to sign a confession in Hebrew which he didn’t understand. During a year in prison extreme mistreatment continued, e.g. raids where the army would discharge tear gas into cells, then rushing in to beat prisoners with batons.
- Canadian government being asked to place Israel back in the manual of torture states.
Full report at ei (Electronic Initifada)
See also, Torture in Israel & for the wider picture
Jesse Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. His blog can be found at www.allvoices.com/users/jesse.rosenfeld.
