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Israel
torturing Palestinian child prisoners
Posted By Philippe Khan
Appalling photographs of abuse and torture by American
guards at U.S. military bases and detention facilities in Iraq
and Afghanistan shocked the international community, but the
Palestinians have been suffering harsher treatment inside
Israeli prisons since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians’ suffering at the hands of the Israelis
is worse than in any other part of the world. Many of the
Palestinian detainees are children, who are subjected to
physical and psychological torture by Israeli interrogators
and prison guards.
Mohammed Mahsiri, a 17-year-old resident of Dheisheh
refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested by
Israeli occupation forces almost a year and a half ago.
"I was taken to a detention centre and interrogated…The
interrogation would begin at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and
would finish after eleven p.m. I was beaten all the time,
especially if the soldiers did not get the answers they
wanted,” he told IPS.
"I was sent to be beaten by other soldiers and forced
to stand in the rain with only thin clothes on. They would try
to convince me that I did something that I did not do in order
to get the confession they wanted. After being tortured at the
detention centre for one month, I was in prison for 13
months."
Recent reports by human rights groups and legal experts
document widespread, systematic violation of international
laws at Israeli detention centers, where several prisoners are
children under the age of 18, most of whom are subjected to
torture, harsh interrogation tactics, physical beatings,
deplorable living conditions and no access to fair trial.
Although the International Convention of the Rights of the
Child as well as Israeli law defines “a child” as someone
under the age of 18, Israeli military order system in force
inside the occupied West Bank and Gaza classifies Palestinian
children over the age of 16 as adults. The lack of protection
afforded to Palestinian child prisoners contrasts sharply with
the generous rights and treatment granted to arrested Israeli
children.
Conditions in Israeli prisons violate a range of
international human rights standards. Palestinian children are
isolated from adult Palestinians. Accommodation is overcrowded
and unhygienic. There is often not enough bedding or even
space for the basic mattresses. Food is very poor and often
insufficient. Washing and use of toilets is restricted and
children lack access to medical provision and formal
education.
Moreover, Palestinian children over 14 years old are tried
as adults in Israeli military courts, and are often detained
with adult inmates – another direct violation of
international law.
Latest figures released by Defense for Children
International (DCI), an independent group that defends
children’s rights, show that there are 398 Palestinian
children currently held inside Israeli detention centers and
prisons, the youngest of whom is just 14 years old.
"Usually, the Israeli troops invade the child's house
in the middle of the night, in order to frighten the child and
his family," Ayed Abuqtaish, research coordinator with
DCI’s Ramallah offices. "Many Israeli soldiers and
vehicles surround the house, and other soldiers invade or
force their way into the house…
"They intimidate the child to prepare him for
interrogation. When the child arrives at the interrogation
centre, they employ different methods of torture.”
There are widespread accusations of physical abuse,
Abuqtaish says, "but currently, they concentrate mainly
on psychological torture like sleep deprivation, or depriving
him of food or water, or putting him in solitary confinement,
or threatening him with the demolition of his home or the
arrest of other family members.”
“Children have also reported that the Israeli
interrogators have threatened to sexually abuse them,”
Abuqtaish added.
Like the United States, Israel defends its interrogation
techniques, saying that they are a necessary tool against the
“war on terror”. In 1987, according to Israel's Landau
Commission of Inquiry into interrogation policies, the Israeli
government ruled that "a moderate degree of pressure,
including physical pressure, in order to obtain crucial
information, is unavoidable under certain circumstances."
"Israel is a state party to the International
Convention Against Torture," Abuqtaish said. "In its
reports to the committee, Israel always says that their use of
'moderate physical pressure' is consistent with the obligation
of the treaty, but, needless to say, 'moderate physical
pressure' is obviously torture in itself."
Legal experts, meanwhile, say that the military courts that
try Palestinian children are presided over by military
personnel, most of whom lack legal qualifications. Moreover,
Palestinian child prisoners have no guaranteed right to legal
representation and it is extremely difficult for any lawyer to
represent Palestinians before these courts.
"The Israeli court system does not look like any other
court system in the world," says Arne Malmgren, a Swedish
lawyer who has worked as legal observer inside Israeli
military courts during trials of Palestinian children.
"Israeli military staff, the judge, the prosecutor, the
interpreter -- they are all in military uniform. There are
plenty of soldiers with weapons inside the courtroom.
"The small children come into the courtroom in
handcuffs and full chains; there can be up to seven children
at the same time in the courtroom. One lawyer described it as
a cattle market. The trial is more like a plea bargain --
before the proceedings, the prosecutor and the lawyer have
already agreed on the child's sentence, and then they just ask
the judge if he agrees, and he almost always does.”
"There are no witnesses, nothing. And the worst thing
is what happened before the child arrives at the courtroom --
when they interrogate these young boys and girls to get them
to sign confessions to things they may or may not have done,
Malmgren added.
Although the vast majority of arrested Palestinian children
are charged with throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces,
it’s extremely rare for them to avoid prison sentence,
raising concerns that the punishment is based on political
conditions rather than on objective legal standards.
Hopefully, when negotiations between Palestinian and
Israeli officials continue this week over a possible prisoner
exchange deal that may involve the release of all Palestinian
woman and children in return for an Israeli occupation soldier
captured by Palestinian resistance groups last summer,
Palestinians will be able to see their relatives, friends and
loved ones again.
"When I was released from prison, it was the best day
of my life," said Mohammed Mahsiri, who was recently
released from Israeli prisons. "We were beaten every day.
The food was very bad. It was the hardest thing we had to
face. No child should ever have to experience that."
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