http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/state-sanctioned-torture-in-israeli-detention/
EXCERPT (Maan News via AlethoNews):
RAMALLAH — PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Qaraqe released new information Monday revealing cases of child torture under Israeli interrogation.
The announcement came one day ahead of the release of an Israeli rights group document charging Israel with “state sanctioned ill-treatment of interrogees” in at least one detention facility in Petah Tikva, in central Israel.
Qaraqe outlined the case of 13-year-old sixth graders Muhammad Tare Abdul Latif Mukhaimar, and Muhammad Nasser Ali Radwan from the central West Bank town of Beit Ur At-Tahta. Both were detained by Israeli forces in July, he said, and related their stories of torture to officials.
Mukhaimar and Radwan said they were taken by Israeli border guards patrolling sections of Highway 443, a previously settler-only road which was installed with additional checkpoints when an Israeli court decision mandated that it be opened for Palestinian use. When he was forced into a patrol car, Mukhaimar said he was kicked in the legs and beaten with rifle butts until he fell to the floor. The boy said he was then blindfolded and moved to the detention center.
According to the joint B’Tselem and HaMoked report, testimonies from 121 detainees “indicate a clear pattern of activity by the authorities,” which “constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”
Taken to the same detention facility detailed in the report, Mukhaimar said he and Radwan were locked by border guards naked in the facility bathroom and kept there for two days with the air conditioning on.
He was so thirsty, he said, that he and Radwan drank the toilet water. Whenever they became sleepy guards would bang on the door to the room and wake them up, he added.
“The most awful thing that happened, was when the soldiers went to the bathroom, they peed on us and did not use the toilet,” Mukhaimar said, adding that one of the soldiers videotaped the incident.
The two said that after at least 48 hours in the washroom, they were transferred to the Binyamin settlement detention facility, where they were questioned from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. They were then transferred to the Ofer prison for three months then to Remonim prison. They remain in custody pending trial.
Testimonies from the two children were in line with revelations in the report from the rights groups, which said violations against detainees “begin from the moment of their arrest and continue until the detainee’s transfer from the facility.”
According to the collected testimony, “violations include cruel detention conditions in sealed cells, in isolation and disgraceful hygienic conditions, continuous cuffing of detainees’ hands in the interrogation room in a way that makes it impossible for them to move, sleep deprivation, and other methods that harm the detainees physically and mentally.
“Nine percent of the witnesses related that the interrogators used physical violence against them in the interrogation room.”
The report noted that “the use of any one of these means, certainly their combined use, constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and in some instances, torture. All are strictly forbidden under international law and Israeli law.”
Qaraqe said the ministry will file a complaint against the Israeli soldiers involved in the torture of Mukhaimar and Radwan, and their ill-treatment was denounced in the Monday cabinet meeting of the Palestinian Authority.
A statement from the cabinet said “the repressive practices and measures by the occupation authorities” against children were in “violation of international law, human rights conventions relating to children.” Ministers called on rights institutions and the UN to “shoulder its legal and humanitarian efforts to protect our children and our prisoners from brutal Israeli practices against them in prisons and detention centers.”
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