- 15 mrt 2005
The case of a Palestinian resident, who was shot dead by an IDF military dog who has mistaken the Palestinian identity?.
16 mei 2005
Jewish Settlers attempt to burry a Palestinian Alive
8 juli 2005
Elderly man, 80, tied, forced to undress
16 sept 2005
Shooting and Hitting
19 sept 2005
Special report: No need to receive open-fire orders
4 nov 2005
Soldiers attack children in Dier Al Ghsoun village, confiscate their toys
22 nov 2010, 18:32 , Respect -
Maria 5 apr 2006
Settler charged to two years for deliberately shooting a Palestinian (4 febr 2006 Child sentenced to six years)
1 mrt 2006
Medic shot in head, tied to hospital bed in Israeli Hospital
16 mrt 2006
B'Tselem and PHR: Parading of Naked Prisoners in Jericho Violated International Law?
6 apr 2006
Two children released after one year in jail
17 apr 2006
15 year old girl remains in Israeli prison for more than a year after being shot in the stomach
14 juni 2006
The Israeli Army release wild pigs and poisonous snakes in Salfit
26 oct 2006
Report: “Several soldiers killed after requested to take photos faking capture of Lebanese town"
25 sept 2006
Israeli Government dismisses direct hit on press vehicle because only Palestinian reporters injured
22 nov 2010, 18:33 , Respect -
Maria 7 jan 2007
Maslam Abu Shaluf, fisherman
Israeli Navy crew forces Gaza fishermen to swim in their underwear to the navy's boat, Jan. 2007
10 jan 2007
'Abd a-Rahman al-Qun, 15
Soldiers snatch 'Abd a-Rahman al-Qun, 15, from his brother's fishing boat and abuse him, Rafah, January 2007
Amin Hasuna, fisherman
Soldiers force fishermen to abandon their boats and to swim in freezing-cold water, Rafah, Jan. 2007
4 febr 2007
Mahmoud Aghreib, laborer
Border Police deliberately run over foot of Muhammad Aghreib when he tries to enter Israel, February 2007 22 nov 2010, 18:34 , Respect -
Maria 14 mrt 2008
Visual: Soldier fires at unarmed demonstrator in Bilin with rubber bullet
(0:41) Visual: Soldier fires at unarmed demonstrator in Bilin with rubber bullet 2 x viewed
During a demonstration in Bilin against the Separation Barrier, an IDF officer fired a rubber-coated metal bullet from very short range at one of the demonstrators. The victim was not armed, was not throwing stones, and did not endanger the security forces. He was taken to Asaf Harofe Hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the bullet, which had struck him in the thigh. The incident was filmed on video. The footage shows that the shooter was no more than a few meters from the demonstrator when he fired. Army regulations prohibit the use of rubber-coated bullets at a distance of under forty meters, given that rubber-coated bullets might be lethal when fired from a shorter distance. Following B'Tselems letter to the Judge Advocate Generals Office, a Military Police investigation was opened. This was flimed on March 14th 2008
22 nov 2010, 18:35 , Respect -
Maria 25 febr 2009
Israeli police dog attacks the old
(2:09) Israeli police dog attacks the old
A 99-year-old Palestinian man is recovering in hospital after being attacked by Israeli army dogs. The pensioner's ear and shoulder were bitten as he lay in bed when soldiers conducted a house search.
16 mrt 2009
Israeli soldier shot American activist in face with tear gas can
(1:54) Israeli soldier shot American activist in face with tear gas can
An American activist who participated in a Palestinian solidarity demonstration is in serious condition Saturday after an Israeli soldier shot him in the face with a high-velocity tear gas canister. He underwent surgery early Saturday.
Even as the rescue operation commenced, more tear gas rained down on the demonstrators as soldiers allegedly delayed ambulance access.
Tristan Anderson, 38, of Oakland, Calif., was wounded Friday in the West Bank village of Naalin, during a protest against Israels separation barrier, reported the Associated Press. In the past year, four Palestinians have been killed and scores injured by Israeli troops putting down weekly stone-throwing protests against the barrier, which cuts off Naalin from 300 acres of olive groves.
The Israeli soldiers were standing on the hill looking over us firing tear-gas canisters Ulrike Anderson, who was with Tristan when he was hit, told the International Herald-Tribune. Tristan was hit and fell to the ground. He had a large hole in the front of his head. I tried to stop the bleeding. He was bleeding heavily from the nose.
Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500 meters, said Teah Lunqvist with the International Solidarity Movement, according to Californias IndyBay. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
Other ISM activists killed or injured by Israeli forces: Rachel Corrie, killed by a bulldozer in 2003; Brian Avery, shot in the face in 2003; and Tom Hurndall, shot to death in 2004, the site notes.
At the Berkeley Daily Planet, Tristan first became known as an environmentalist by sitting in trees to prevent their removal.
He has worked extensively with Food Not Bombs, Marcus Kryshka, one of Tristans long-time friends, told the paper. He was also heavily involved with the tree-sit.
Kryshka said one of the reasons for his trip to Israel was to engage in solidarity with the Palestinian protesters.
The Israeli army claimed protesters were throwing rocks at the troops.
Anderson could very well die from his injuries, reported ABC. And even if he does recover, his friends doubt hell ever be the same, physically and mentally.
This video is from PalSolidarity.org, broadcast Mar. 13, 2009. It contains graphic images.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/israeli-s...
http://infowars.com
20 juni 2009
Israel Torturing Palestinian Civilian
(0:44) Israel Torturing Palestinian Civilian
Border Policemen have filmed themselves abusing and humiliating Palestinians in videos they have posted on YouTube over the past year.
In one clip uploaded to the video sharing website an Arab youth is shown in arid terrain, slapping himself, while a voice is heard instructing him to say "I love you, Border Police," and "I will f**k you, Palestine," in Arabic. The victim is forced to respond to everything he is ordered to do, to the raucous laughter of the cameraman and his friends, all Border Policemen.
http://ping.fm/CWaxP
Saffa 27 6 09 Farmers were prevented to work in their land--Palestine/Israel
(7:16) Saffa 27 6 09 Farmers were prevented to work in their land--Palestine/Israel
27 June 2009: Israeli forces arrest 24 solidarity activists and 2 hired Palestinian Israeli drivers in the West Bank village of Saffa.
At 7.30am, 35 Israeli and 10 international solidarity activists joined 3 Palestinian families from Beit Ummar to harvest their land. As the group tried to go down to their lands, 50 soldiers and border policemen stopped them.
Before reaching the land, Israeli forces arrested 10 Israeli and international activists, under the premise that Saffa was under a Closed Military Zone*. The army was aggressive towards the group and used violence against them.
After pushing the group, border policemen arrested another 9 activists.
Yousef Abu Maria from the Palestine Solidarity Project, had his leg broken from the use of excessive force. Israeli soldiers tried to arrest him, but the solidarity activists negotiated for the soldiers to release him and allow him to be taken by an ambulance from the Palestinian Red Crescent. He is currently being treated at a Hebron hospital.
A female Israeli activist from Tayyoush was also injured and is currently at an Israeli hospital seeking treatment for a potentially broken hand.
As 2 cars with hired drivers were leaving the area with other activists, Israeli forces stopped them and arrested 5 more activists and the 2 Palestinian Israeli drivers.
The arrested were taken to the Israeli prison in the illegal settlement of Gush Etzion.
17 mei 2009
Brave israeli soldier butts head of little palestinian woman
(0:56) Brave israeli soilder head butts little palesine woman
22 nov 2010, 18:45 , Respect -
Maria 28 jan 2010
Bil'in : Israeli Occupation Forces Night Raid
(9:57) Part 1 Bil'in : Israeli Occupation Forces Night Raid.wmv 2 x viewed
(9:14) Part 2 Bil'in : Israeli Occupation Forces Night Raid.wmv
(6:20) Part 3 Bil'in Israeli Occupation Forces Night Raid.wmv 1 x viewed
Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.
At 1:45am today (28th Jan 2010) Mohammed Khatib, his wife Lamia and their four young children were woken up by Israeli soldiers storming their home, which was surrounded by a large military force. Once inside the house, the soldiers arrested Khatib, conducted a quick search and left the house.
Roughly half an hour after leaving the house, five military jeeps surrounded the house again, and six soldiers forced their way into the house, where Khatib's children sat in terror. The forces conducted another very thorough search of the premises, without showing a search warrant. During the search, Khatib's phone and many documents were seized, including papers from Bilin's legal procedures in the Israel high court. The soldiers exited an hour and a half later, leaving a note saying that documents suspected as "incitement materials" were seized. International activists who tried to enter the house to be with the family during the search were aggressively denied entry.
Mohammed Khatib was previously arrested during the ongoing wave of arrests and repression on 3 August 2009 with charges of incitement and stone throwing. After two weeks of detention, a military judge ruled that evidence against him was falsified and ordered his release, after it was proven that Khatib was abroad at the time the army alleged he was photographed throwing stones during a demonstration.
Khatib's arrest today is the most severe escalation in a recent wave of repression again the Palestinian popular struggle and its leadership. Khatib is the 35th resident of Bilin to be arrested on suspicions related to anti-wall protest since 23 June 2009.
The recent wave of arrests is largely an assault on the members of the Popular Committees -- the leadership of the popular struggle -- who are then charged with incitement when arrested. The charge of incitement, defined under Israeli military law as "an attempt, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order," is a cynical attempt to punish grassroots organizing with a hefty charge and lengthy imprisonment. Such indictments are part of the army's strategy of using legal persecution as a means to quash the popular movement.
Similar raids have also been conducted in the village of al-Maasara, south of Bethlehem, and in the village of Nilin -- where 110 residents have been arrested over the last year and half -- as well as in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah and East Jerusalem.
Among those arrested in the recent campaign are three members of the Nilin Popular Committee, Said Yakin of the Palestinian National Committee Against the Wall, and five members of the Bilin Popular Committee -- all suspected of incitement.
Prominent grassroots activists Jamal Juma' (East Jerusalem) and Mohammed Othman (Jayyous) of the Stop the Wall nongovernmental organization, involved in anti-wall and boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigning, have recently been released from detention after being incarcerated for long periods based on secret evidence and with no charges brought against them.
22 nov 2010, 18:49 , Respect -
Maria 13 febr 2010
In Palestine bystander shot by the IDF :Beit Ommar
(2:32) In Palestine bystander shot by the IDF :Beit Ommar
- 9 apr 2010
Imprisoning Palestinian Children
In June 2009, Defence for Children International (DCI)/Palestine Section published a report titled, "Palestine Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities."
DCI/Palestine "is a national section of the international non-government child rights organisation and movement (dedicated) to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children," according to international law principles.
Each year, about 700 West Bank children, under 18, are arrested, detained, interrogated, and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, in total about 6,500 since 2000. DCI lawyers represent 30 - 40% of them. The report focuses on their torture and abuse in custody.
Since the 1967 occupation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinian men, women, and children passed through Israel's judicial system, over 150,000 tried in military courts from 1990 - 2006, the remainder handled through plea bargains for lighter sentences. On average, over 9,000 Palestinians a year are affected, including 700 children treated the same as adults.
For nearly 43 years, Israeli military justice operated "almost completely devoid of international scrutiny," giving authorities license to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity. As a result, due process and judicial fairness don't apply under a system denying them.
Yet Article 37(b) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states:
"The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child...shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
In fact, Palestinian children are routinely arrested at checkpoints, on streets, going to or coming from school, tending olive groves, at play, and (most commonly) at home in the middle of the night, usually from midnight to 4AM with family members threatened not to intervene, beaten if they try, forced onto streets in their nightclothes, regardless of weather, and given no explanation.
Typically, arrests are lawless and violent. Homes are broken into unannounced, property damaged or stolen, children blindfolded, shackled, and often beaten, then thrust into jeeps, sometimes face down, for transfer to interrogation and detention centers, a procedure that includes beatings, verbal abuse and other degrading and inhumane treatment.
At detention centers, they're either placed in a cell or interrogated immediately. Usually no lawyer is present for days or weeks until questioning ends with a signed Hebrew confession few can read or understand. Once gotten, they're used against them in military courts, never mind that torture extracted evidence is inadmissible under international law.
Article 15 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."
In custody, children endure:
-- blindfolding and painful shackling;
-- beatings;
-- violent shaking;
-- sleep depravation;
-- solitary confinement;
-- other forms of sensory deprivation;
-- no food and water for extended periods;
-- poor quality or inedible food when gotten;
-- no access to toilets, showers and clean clothes;
-- exposure to extreme heat or cold;
-- painful stress positions for extended periods;
-- sexual abuse;
-- threats, insults and cursing; and
-- extremely loud noises.
Often their parents and siblings are also arrested, beaten, detained, and their homes sometimes demolished.
After interrogation, detainees are processed for trial, sentencing, and imprisonment by one of two West Bank military courts, both on military bases. Decisions may be appealed in the Military Court of Appeals, but rarely ever will the High Court of Justice hear them.
Judges and prosecutors are military officers, some not certified by the Israeli Bar Association. Dispensing justice is nearly impossible under a system with no accepted standards. Children as young as 12 (and some younger) are prosecuted the same as adults, tribunals calling them adults at age 16, in contrast to Jews at age 18.
Under Military Order 132, six months is the maximum sentence for children aged 12 - 13; 12 months usually from 14 - 15 for offenses with a maximum penalty of less than five years; and unlimited for more serious offenses; under Military Order 378, 20 years for stone-throwing is permitted (the most common offense charged); and children 16 or older are considered adults and treated no differently.
Military courts deny judicial fairness, including:
-- the right to counsel until forced confessions are extracted, commonly by torture, pressure, intimidation, and at times trickery;
-- the right to prepare a proper defense with enough time, in adequate facilities, in confidence, with court documents in Arabic;
-- under Military Order 378, detainees may be denied counsel for up to 90 days;
-- under a grossly unjust system, attorneys commonly seek plea bargains to avoid trials and harsher sentences;
-- defendants, including young children are presumed guilty, full acquittals gotten in just 0.29% of cases;
-- the right to examine witnesses is restricted; few full evidentiary cases are heard; according to Yesh Din (volunteers for human rights), of 9,123 cases in 2006, only 130 (1.42%) got full evidentiary trials because having them is futile and punishments far harsher when convicted;
-- unlike in civil courts for Jews, Palestinians have no right to trial without undue delay:
(1) detention until a hearing before a judge - 24 hours for Jews; up to eight days for Palestinians;
(2) total detention period before indictment - 30 days for Jews, and up to 75 on authority of the Attorney General; up to 180 days for Palestinians;
(3) detention from end of investigation to indictment - 5 days for Jews; 10 days for Palestinians;
(4) detention from indictment until arraignment - 30 days for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians;
(5) detention from arraignment to end of proceedings - 9 months for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians; and
(6 ) judicial approval of detention extensions if proceedings continue - 3 months for Jews (per a Supreme Court judge); six months for Palestinians (per Military Court of Appeals judge).
In addition, defense lawyers rarely know charges until hearing days. Palestinian children are usually denied bail, and respect for their rights under international law is ignored.
Fourth Geneva's Article 147 requires fair trials, holding those responsible for denying them criminally liable.
Detention Conditions
Children as young as 12, and sometimes younger, endure overcrowding, poor ventilation, little or no access to natural light, poor quality (often inedible) and inadequate amounts of food, isolation, torture and abusive treatment.
Little or no education is provided, and none in interrogation and detention centers where children are often held for three months or longer. Also, with one exception, prisons are inside Israel in breach of Fourth Geneva's Article 76, stating:
"Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein."
The provision also requires providing proper food, medical care, and spiritual help - women in separate quarters, supervised by women, and minors getting special treatment.
Palestinian detainees get none of the above, including permits for family members to visit imprisoned relatives.
Common Complaints
From January 2001 - December 2008, "over 600 complaints were filed against Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators for alleged ill-treatment and torture." The Police Investigation Department and Justice Ministry conducted no investigations, claiming "insufficient evidence."
Relevant International Law
Torture, abuse, degrading and inhumane treatment are unequivocally prohibited at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.
Article 2(2) of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Its Article 1 defines it as follows:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Other relevant laws include Fourth Geneva, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, calling torture a crime against humanity in Article 7 and a war crime in Article 8.
These laws also prohibit other forms of abuse, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. In addition, all nations are obligated to prevent torture and other forms of abuse, and to prosecute offenders under its jurisdiction.
Fourth Geneva also mandates they search for and prosecute them under the universal jurisdiction (UJ) principle, relating to crimes of war, against humanity, genocide, or slavery. UJ is to ensure there's no place to hide.
Comments from Children During Arrests and Detention
-- "I went from having a normal life at home to handcuffs, deprivation of sleep, shouting, threats, rounds of interrogation and serious accusations. In these circumstances, life becomes dark, filled with fear and pessimism - tough days that words cannot describe."
-- "A soldier pointed his rifle at me. The rifle barrel was a few centimeters away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: 'shivering? Tell me where the pistol is before I shoot you.' "
-- After arrest, "they stripped us out of our trousers and T-shirts. They then started to throw stones at our backs while laughing and making fun of us."
-- "While we were walking to the gate, the soldiers hit us with their rifles in our backs and laughed."
-- "As soon as the jeep started to move, (a ) soldier who had pushed me, kicked me on my broken hand and beat me on my shoulders with his rifle."
-- Inside (a ) clinic, they beat me on the back and neck with their hands. One of the soldiers took a rope that was on the table and placed it around my neck and pressed tightly to suffocate me."
-- A soldier "hit me in the face with the barrel of his rifle and that led to my nose and mouth bleeding profusely. All of this happened in front of my mother who was begging them to let me go."
-- "I felt my hands were about to explode because they were tied so tight. I asked the soldiers to loosen the handcuffs but they responded by shouting and using very obscene language."
-- "I felt extreme pain in my neck and back. I felt dizzy and was about to vomit. Whenever I lifted my head up, the soldiers would shout at me."
-- "I was interrogated for three days. My hands and feet were tied to the wall in the shape of a cross. I spent one full day in this position. I felt extreme pain and swelling in my hands. The soldiers then moved me to solitary confinement where I spent 15 days. I used to urinate in the cell."
-- "After two hours, the interrogator producer another paper written in Hebrew and asked me to sign it, saying it was an approval (for medical treatment), so I signed it. It turned out later that I had signed a full confession."
Interrogations
After arrest and transfer, they usually begin straightaway with no right to counsel or an adult present. Unlike in Israel, they're not videotaped to hide incriminating evidence.
Commonly, children are kept painfully shackled, threatened, cursed, tortured and abused during the process, at times while hooded. Interrogations continue for days until coerced (or at times tricked) confessions are gotten.
DCI/Palestine "encountered (no) single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated."
Female Detainees
They comprise a small percent of the total, around 4% in 2008. Like others, female child prisoners are usually incarcerated in Israel with adults, in violation of international law prohibiting both practices.
One of many poignant images shows a teenage girl and the caption: "I am not a terrorist."
Another, on the Separation Wall, shows a young girl holding balloons on strings being lifted into the air to liberation.
Administrative Detention
Under Military Order 1591, Palestinians, including children, can be detained without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods that can last years.
Fourth Geneva's Article 42 and ICCPR's Article 4 permit them only if:
"the security of the state...makes it absolutely necessary (and only according to) regular procedure," excluding long-term renewable extensions.
Under Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), no:
"child should be deprived of his or her liberty arbitrarily and detention should only be used as a measure of last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time."
Most often, they're based on secret evidence, withheld from detainees and their counsel, making a proper defense impossible. At any time in 2008, up to 700 Palestinian, men, women and children were administratively detained, a procedure Israelis use against political leaders, human rights activists, protestors, and children accused of stone-throwing. It's also common for them to get multiple detention orders, renewed within days of their expected release.
Soldiers Justifying Palestinian Beatings and Abuse
On May 21, 2009, B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) called on the chief of staff and judge advocate general to investigate an item called: "A Blow is Sometimes an Integral Part of the Mission," presenting testimonies of Col. Itai Virob, commander of Kfir Brigade and Lt. Col. Shimon, commander of Shimshon Battalion.
They admitted authorizing harassment, violence, injurious, and at times lethal means, against Palestinians "to extract information (during) interrogation."
Col. Virob said:
"The mission is to try to upset the equilibrium of the neighborhood, village, or particular location, to get information....or to cause a hostile entity inside the village to make mistakes as a result or in reaction to actions of our forces, and thus disrupt his activity and expose it."
Tactics include "throwing stun grenades, breaking into a number of houses or institutions....arresting residents, seizing areas on rooftops, and the like....We will detain, interrogate and use suitable pressure on every person to get to the one terrorist. Of all the means of pressure that we use, the vast majority are against persons who are not involved."
Lt. Col. Shimon said:
"There are no exercises, nothing written (and to get information we) use force. These orders (include) routine use of violence and potentially injury-causing (acts, at times) lethal, against civilians, and harassing them, (even though they're) patently illegal," but are routinely used nonetheless.
It's a policy of premeditated state-sponsored terror against defenseless men, women and children. On May 15, 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture (monitoring Convention Against Torture violations) issued Concluding Observations and conclusions on Israeli practices, expressing grave concerns about:
-- torture, abuse, degrading and humiliating treatment during and after interrogations;
-- Palestinian children detained and interrogated without counsel and/or family members present;
-- torture used to extract confessions;
-- 700 Palestinian children detained annually and prosecuted in military courts affording no judicial fairness;
-- 95% of convictions based on coerced confessions;
-- prisons in Israel violate international law and impede family visits, and
-- administrative detentions violate Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture because of abusive interrogations, secret evidence, and long incarcerations.
Israel is a serial scofflaw, systematically scorning and violating international laws and norms with impunity. DCI/Palestine says torture and abuse remain unabated, "from the moment of arrest, and continue during transfer, interrogation and detention."
The practice is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command. This abusive system operates with the knowledge and assistance of some doctors, and is overseen by a military court system that ignores basic principles of juvenile justice and fair trial rights, whilst willfully turning a blind eye to the presentation in court of one coerced confession after another."
Israeli lawlessness is ignored by the world community that's obligated to act under international law, but won't. Short of enforced accountability, it's "unlikely that the situation endured by Palestinian children (their siblings, parents, and friends) described (above), will improve."
http://bit.ly/d9CN4V 22 nov 2010, 19:07 , Respect -
Maria 22 nov 2010, 19:10 , Respect -
Maria 22 nov 2010, 19:10 , Respect -
Maria 1 juli 2010
Twilight Zone / A night in Hebron
Soldiers seized a high-school student, held burning cigarettes to his forehead and hands and cut his cheek with a penknife.
The scars speak for themselves: a scorched hole in the middle of his forehead, like a mark of Cain, two more burn holes on his right hand and one on his left arm. The scratches on his face and arm have already healed. That's what remains from the night on which soldiers decided to have a little fun with Salah Rajabi, a student in the 12th grade at the Tareq School in Hebron.
It's not the first time soldiers have beaten him up. There have been no fewer than 12 previous attacks. The most serious of them occurred in 2006, when soldiers broke the boy's shoulder and he was hospitalized. In December 2008, he was arrested with his two brothers on suspicion of stone throwing and released after 10 days. On another occasion he was arrested and released on bail of NIS 1,000. But this was the scariest attack of all, with the burning cigarettes on his flesh, the penknife that cut into his face and a mysterious pill the soldiers made him swallow by force, which frightened him more than anything else.
Another "Clockwork Orange" night in Hebron, in Israeli-controlled Area H2, which has been almost totally abandoned by the Palestinian residents for fear of the settlers and the Israel Defense Forces. Another display of wildness by soldiers, who thought that undercover of darkness they could do as they pleased. The IDF Spokesman made do this week with an appallingly laconic response: "The complaint that was filed with the police will be transmitted to the office of the military advocate general and after it is examined a decision will be made on how to proceed." Whatever.
Rajabi, 19, is trying to complete his matriculation exams. He comes from a poor family of 19 children, from two mothers. Every day after school he goes to his sweets stand, peddling cheap baklava in front of his house. He was there on June 14, too. There was no school that day, because of the exams. In the afternoon he went to his stand and by 10 P.M. he had sold all his wares. He then set out to visit his sister, who, like her husband, is deaf and mute.
He is a hefty young man, muscular but shy, his voice soft. His older brother, Kaad, sits next to him, to support him. His sister's home isn't far from where he lives. As he walked up the street, which is partially lit and partially dark, an IDF Jeep, coming from the direction of the stonemasons' industrial zone, suddenly pulled up next to him. The soldier sitting next to the driver opened the door and asked to see his ID card.
The driver recognized him immediately. "Is it you?" he asked. Maybe he's considered a troublemaker, though he has never been convicted of anything. Two other soldiers, who were sitting in the back seat, got out of the Jeep and moved toward him. They pushed him forcefully into the vehicle. Rajabi says he did not resist. He was frightened. They made him sit on the floor of the Jeep, in the back, but did not tie his hands or blindfold him, which is standard procedure in making an arrest.
The soldiers lit cigarettes: four soldiers and four cigarettes in one military Jeep with a Palestinian detainee on the floor, driving through the streets of Hebron, which overnight turned into Marlboro country. The Jeep kept moving, when suddenly one of the soldiers sitting in the back placed the burning cigarette against Rajabi's forehead. While Rajabi was trying to recover from the pain and shock, the soldier sitting next to the driver pulled Rajabi's arm forward and stuck his cigarette twice into the palm of the youth's right hand. Here are the holes. The soldiers cursed him; he's ashamed to repeat what they said. Then the other soldier in the back seat grabbed his left arm and jabbed his burning cigarette deep into it. Here is the hole. Only the driver puffed away tranquilly and did nothing.
Like all games, it's not over till it's over. Now the soldier in the back who was the first to brand Rajabi with a cigarette took out a penknife, one of those with which soldiers pierce the plastic handcuffs of their prisoners, and held it against Rajabi's right cheek. Rajabi was deathly afraid. The soldier cut his cheek across its whole length and then worked on his left arm as well. Not a very deep cut, but blood flowed from his face. He wiped it away with his shirt.
Throughout, the Jeep kept going. They reached a dark, empty lot in the Jebel Juhar area. The driver stopped and turned off the engine. The four soldiers got out and ordered their victim to kneel on the ground. He did as they commanded. They grabbed his head and forced his mouth open, Rajabi relates. One soldier took out a pill and stuffed it into Rajabi's mouth. They held his mouth open until they were certain he had swallowed the bitter pill. Then they threw him to the ground, got into the Jeep and sped off.
Rajabi lay there in the dark, exhausted and in a panic, blood on his face and arm. In a few minutes he pulled himself together, got up and made his way to the home of relatives about 300 meters from the empty lot. It was midnight. He knocked on the door. His shirt was dirty from the ground and stained with his blood. Opening the door in his pajamas, Ahmed Rajabi was appalled to see his distraught relative. He later testified that this was what happened to Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
"What happened to you?" Ahmed asked Salah Rajabi, and he told him how the soldiers had stopped him, burned him with cigarettes, cut him with a knife and forced him to swallow a pill. The two called Kaad, Salah's brother, who lives close by.
At this stage, Rajabi felt himself losing consciousness. He was certain it was because of the pill. Kaad arrived immediately and took his brother to Aliya Hospital in the city. On the way, he relates, his brother passed out. In the hospital his stomach was flushed, but the physicians told Kaad they did not have the equipment to determine what the pill was. When his brother woke up in the morning, Kaad relates, he began to attack everyone in sight in a fit of rage or fear.
Rajabi was injected with a tranquilizer and sent home. Since then he has not taken any more exams or returned to his baklava stand. Last week he filed a complaint with the Hebron police, complaint no. 230003/2010. The IDF, as we saw, is looking into it.
22 nov 2010, 19:12 , Respect -
Maria 22 nov 2010, 19:13 , Respect -
Maria israeli soldiers breaking the bones of a Palestinian
(0:32) Attrocity of Occupation: israeli soldiers breaking the bones of a Palestinian 1 x viewed
22 nov 2010, 19:14 , Respect -
Maria Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See
(2:59) Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See 1 x viewed
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Maria
(1:07) Israeli Army of Cyber-Soldiers Target Our Right to Know
22 nov 2010, 19:16 , Respect -
Maria If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!
(3:22) If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!
22 nov 2010, 19:21 , Respect -
Maria
(4:21) If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!
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(1:58) Palestinian Children Beaten by Israeli Soldier 2 x viewed
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Maria 22 nov 2010, 19:25 , Respect -
Maria 22 nov 2010, 19:26 , Respect -
Maria (1:42) Journalist Receives Death Threat for Talking About Israel 3 x viewed
22 nov 2010, 19:27 , Respect -
Maria (6:51) Americans don't know What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED
9 apr 2010
Imprisoning Palestinian Children
In June 2009, Defence for Children International (DCI)/Palestine Section published a report titled, "Palestine Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities."
DCI/Palestine "is a national section of the international non-government child rights organisation and movement (dedicated) to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children," according to international law principles.
Each year, about 700 West Bank children, under 18, are arrested, detained, interrogated, and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, in total about 6,500 since 2000. DCI lawyers represent 30 - 40% of them. The report focuses on their torture and abuse in custody.
Since the 1967 occupation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinian men, women, and children passed through Israel's judicial system, over 150,000 tried in military courts from 1990 - 2006, the remainder handled through plea bargains for lighter sentences. On average, over 9,000 Palestinians a year are affected, including 700 children treated the same as adults.
For nearly 43 years, Israeli military justice operated "almost completely devoid of international scrutiny," giving authorities license to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity. As a result, due process and judicial fairness don't apply under a system denying them.
Yet Article 37(b) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states:
"The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child...shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
In fact, Palestinian children are routinely arrested at checkpoints, on streets, going to or coming from school, tending olive groves, at play, and (most commonly) at home in the middle of the night, usually from midnight to 4AM with family members threatened not to intervene, beaten if they try, forced onto streets in their nightclothes, regardless of weather, and given no explanation.
Typically, arrests are lawless and violent. Homes are broken into unannounced, property damaged or stolen, children blindfolded, shackled, and often beaten, then thrust into jeeps, sometimes face down, for transfer to interrogation and detention centers, a procedure that includes beatings, verbal abuse and other degrading and inhumane treatment.
At detention centers, they're either placed in a cell or interrogated immediately. Usually no lawyer is present for days or weeks until questioning ends with a signed Hebrew confession few can read or understand. Once gotten, they're used against them in military courts, never mind that torture extracted evidence is inadmissible under international law.
Article 15 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."
In custody, children endure:
-- blindfolding and painful shackling;
-- beatings;
-- violent shaking;
-- sleep depravation;
-- solitary confinement;
-- other forms of sensory deprivation;
-- no food and water for extended periods;
-- poor quality or inedible food when gotten;
-- no access to toilets, showers and clean clothes;
-- exposure to extreme heat or cold;
-- painful stress positions for extended periods;
-- sexual abuse;
-- threats, insults and cursing; and
-- extremely loud noises.
Often their parents and siblings are also arrested, beaten, detained, and their homes sometimes demolished.
After interrogation, detainees are processed for trial, sentencing, and imprisonment by one of two West Bank military courts, both on military bases. Decisions may be appealed in the Military Court of Appeals, but rarely ever will the High Court of Justice hear them.
Judges and prosecutors are military officers, some not certified by the Israeli Bar Association. Dispensing justice is nearly impossible under a system with no accepted standards. Children as young as 12 (and some younger) are prosecuted the same as adults, tribunals calling them adults at age 16, in contrast to Jews at age 18.
Under Military Order 132, six months is the maximum sentence for children aged 12 - 13; 12 months usually from 14 - 15 for offenses with a maximum penalty of less than five years; and unlimited for more serious offenses; under Military Order 378, 20 years for stone-throwing is permitted (the most common offense charged); and children 16 or older are considered adults and treated no differently.
Military courts deny judicial fairness, including:
-- the right to counsel until forced confessions are extracted, commonly by torture, pressure, intimidation, and at times trickery;
-- the right to prepare a proper defense with enough time, in adequate facilities, in confidence, with court documents in Arabic;
-- under Military Order 378, detainees may be denied counsel for up to 90 days;
-- under a grossly unjust system, attorneys commonly seek plea bargains to avoid trials and harsher sentences;
-- defendants, including young children are presumed guilty, full acquittals gotten in just 0.29% of cases;
-- the right to examine witnesses is restricted; few full evidentiary cases are heard; according to Yesh Din (volunteers for human rights), of 9,123 cases in 2006, only 130 (1.42%) got full evidentiary trials because having them is futile and punishments far harsher when convicted;
-- unlike in civil courts for Jews, Palestinians have no right to trial without undue delay:
(1) detention until a hearing before a judge - 24 hours for Jews; up to eight days for Palestinians;
(2) total detention period before indictment - 30 days for Jews, and up to 75 on authority of the Attorney General; up to 180 days for Palestinians;
(3) detention from end of investigation to indictment - 5 days for Jews; 10 days for Palestinians;
(4) detention from indictment until arraignment - 30 days for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians;
(5) detention from arraignment to end of proceedings - 9 months for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians; and
(6 ) judicial approval of detention extensions if proceedings continue - 3 months for Jews (per a Supreme Court judge); six months for Palestinians (per Military Court of Appeals judge).
In addition, defense lawyers rarely know charges until hearing days. Palestinian children are usually denied bail, and respect for their rights under international law is ignored.
Fourth Geneva's Article 147 requires fair trials, holding those responsible for denying them criminally liable.
Detention Conditions
Children as young as 12, and sometimes younger, endure overcrowding, poor ventilation, little or no access to natural light, poor quality (often inedible) and inadequate amounts of food, isolation, torture and abusive treatment.
Little or no education is provided, and none in interrogation and detention centers where children are often held for three months or longer. Also, with one exception, prisons are inside Israel in breach of Fourth Geneva's Article 76, stating:
"Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein."
The provision also requires providing proper food, medical care, and spiritual help - women in separate quarters, supervised by women, and minors getting special treatment.
Palestinian detainees get none of the above, including permits for family members to visit imprisoned relatives.
Common Complaints
From January 2001 - December 2008, "over 600 complaints were filed against Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators for alleged ill-treatment and torture." The Police Investigation Department and Justice Ministry conducted no investigations, claiming "insufficient evidence."
Relevant International Law
Torture, abuse, degrading and inhumane treatment are unequivocally prohibited at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.
Article 2(2) of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Its Article 1 defines it as follows:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Other relevant laws include Fourth Geneva, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, calling torture a crime against humanity in Article 7 and a war crime in Article 8.
These laws also prohibit other forms of abuse, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. In addition, all nations are obligated to prevent torture and other forms of abuse, and to prosecute offenders under its jurisdiction.
Fourth Geneva also mandates they search for and prosecute them under the universal jurisdiction (UJ) principle, relating to crimes of war, against humanity, genocide, or slavery. UJ is to ensure there's no place to hide.
Comments from Children During Arrests and Detention
-- "I went from having a normal life at home to handcuffs, deprivation of sleep, shouting, threats, rounds of interrogation and serious accusations. In these circumstances, life becomes dark, filled with fear and pessimism - tough days that words cannot describe."
-- "A soldier pointed his rifle at me. The rifle barrel was a few centimeters away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: 'shivering? Tell me where the pistol is before I shoot you.' "
-- After arrest, "they stripped us out of our trousers and T-shirts. They then started to throw stones at our backs while laughing and making fun of us."
-- "While we were walking to the gate, the soldiers hit us with their rifles in our backs and laughed."
-- "As soon as the jeep started to move, (a ) soldier who had pushed me, kicked me on my broken hand and beat me on my shoulders with his rifle."
-- Inside (a ) clinic, they beat me on the back and neck with their hands. One of the soldiers took a rope that was on the table and placed it around my neck and pressed tightly to suffocate me."
-- A soldier "hit me in the face with the barrel of his rifle and that led to my nose and mouth bleeding profusely. All of this happened in front of my mother who was begging them to let me go."
-- "I felt my hands were about to explode because they were tied so tight. I asked the soldiers to loosen the handcuffs but they responded by shouting and using very obscene language."
-- "I felt extreme pain in my neck and back. I felt dizzy and was about to vomit. Whenever I lifted my head up, the soldiers would shout at me."
-- "I was interrogated for three days. My hands and feet were tied to the wall in the shape of a cross. I spent one full day in this position. I felt extreme pain and swelling in my hands. The soldiers then moved me to solitary confinement where I spent 15 days. I used to urinate in the cell."
-- "After two hours, the interrogator producer another paper written in Hebrew and asked me to sign it, saying it was an approval (for medical treatment), so I signed it. It turned out later that I had signed a full confession."
Interrogations
After arrest and transfer, they usually begin straightaway with no right to counsel or an adult present. Unlike in Israel, they're not videotaped to hide incriminating evidence.
Commonly, children are kept painfully shackled, threatened, cursed, tortured and abused during the process, at times while hooded. Interrogations continue for days until coerced (or at times tricked) confessions are gotten.
DCI/Palestine "encountered (no) single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated."
Female Detainees
They comprise a small percent of the total, around 4% in 2008. Like others, female child prisoners are usually incarcerated in Israel with adults, in violation of international law prohibiting both practices.
One of many poignant images shows a teenage girl and the caption: "I am not a terrorist."
Another, on the Separation Wall, shows a young girl holding balloons on strings being lifted into the air to liberation.
Administrative Detention
Under Military Order 1591, Palestinians, including children, can be detained without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods that can last years.
Fourth Geneva's Article 42 and ICCPR's Article 4 permit them only if:
"the security of the state...makes it absolutely necessary (and only according to) regular procedure," excluding long-term renewable extensions.
Under Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), no:
"child should be deprived of his or her liberty arbitrarily and detention should only be used as a measure of last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time."
Most often, they're based on secret evidence, withheld from detainees and their counsel, making a proper defense impossible. At any time in 2008, up to 700 Palestinian, men, women and children were administratively detained, a procedure Israelis use against political leaders, human rights activists, protestors, and children accused of stone-throwing. It's also common for them to get multiple detention orders, renewed within days of their expected release.
Soldiers Justifying Palestinian Beatings and Abuse
On May 21, 2009, B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) called on the chief of staff and judge advocate general to investigate an item called: "A Blow is Sometimes an Integral Part of the Mission," presenting testimonies of Col. Itai Virob, commander of Kfir Brigade and Lt. Col. Shimon, commander of Shimshon Battalion.
They admitted authorizing harassment, violence, injurious, and at times lethal means, against Palestinians "to extract information (during) interrogation."
Col. Virob said:
"The mission is to try to upset the equilibrium of the neighborhood, village, or particular location, to get information....or to cause a hostile entity inside the village to make mistakes as a result or in reaction to actions of our forces, and thus disrupt his activity and expose it."
Tactics include "throwing stun grenades, breaking into a number of houses or institutions....arresting residents, seizing areas on rooftops, and the like....We will detain, interrogate and use suitable pressure on every person to get to the one terrorist. Of all the means of pressure that we use, the vast majority are against persons who are not involved."
Lt. Col. Shimon said:
"There are no exercises, nothing written (and to get information we) use force. These orders (include) routine use of violence and potentially injury-causing (acts, at times) lethal, against civilians, and harassing them, (even though they're) patently illegal," but are routinely used nonetheless.
It's a policy of premeditated state-sponsored terror against defenseless men, women and children. On May 15, 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture (monitoring Convention Against Torture violations) issued Concluding Observations and conclusions on Israeli practices, expressing grave concerns about:
-- torture, abuse, degrading and humiliating treatment during and after interrogations;
-- Palestinian children detained and interrogated without counsel and/or family members present;
-- torture used to extract confessions;
-- 700 Palestinian children detained annually and prosecuted in military courts affording no judicial fairness;
-- 95% of convictions based on coerced confessions;
-- prisons in Israel violate international law and impede family visits, and
-- administrative detentions violate Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture because of abusive interrogations, secret evidence, and long incarcerations.
Israel is a serial scofflaw, systematically scorning and violating international laws and norms with impunity. DCI/Palestine says torture and abuse remain unabated, "from the moment of arrest, and continue during transfer, interrogation and detention."
The practice is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command. This abusive system operates with the knowledge and assistance of some doctors, and is overseen by a military court system that ignores basic principles of juvenile justice and fair trial rights, whilst willfully turning a blind eye to the presentation in court of one coerced confession after another."
Israeli lawlessness is ignored by the world community that's obligated to act under international law, but won't. Short of enforced accountability, it's "unlikely that the situation endured by Palestinian children (their siblings, parents, and friends) described (above), will improve."
http://bit.ly/d9CN4V
Imprisoning Palestinian Children
In June 2009, Defence for Children International (DCI)/Palestine Section published a report titled, "Palestine Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities."
DCI/Palestine "is a national section of the international non-government child rights organisation and movement (dedicated) to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children," according to international law principles.
Each year, about 700 West Bank children, under 18, are arrested, detained, interrogated, and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, in total about 6,500 since 2000. DCI lawyers represent 30 - 40% of them. The report focuses on their torture and abuse in custody.
Since the 1967 occupation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinian men, women, and children passed through Israel's judicial system, over 150,000 tried in military courts from 1990 - 2006, the remainder handled through plea bargains for lighter sentences. On average, over 9,000 Palestinians a year are affected, including 700 children treated the same as adults.
For nearly 43 years, Israeli military justice operated "almost completely devoid of international scrutiny," giving authorities license to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity. As a result, due process and judicial fairness don't apply under a system denying them.
Yet Article 37(b) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states:
"The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child...shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
In fact, Palestinian children are routinely arrested at checkpoints, on streets, going to or coming from school, tending olive groves, at play, and (most commonly) at home in the middle of the night, usually from midnight to 4AM with family members threatened not to intervene, beaten if they try, forced onto streets in their nightclothes, regardless of weather, and given no explanation.
Typically, arrests are lawless and violent. Homes are broken into unannounced, property damaged or stolen, children blindfolded, shackled, and often beaten, then thrust into jeeps, sometimes face down, for transfer to interrogation and detention centers, a procedure that includes beatings, verbal abuse and other degrading and inhumane treatment.
At detention centers, they're either placed in a cell or interrogated immediately. Usually no lawyer is present for days or weeks until questioning ends with a signed Hebrew confession few can read or understand. Once gotten, they're used against them in military courts, never mind that torture extracted evidence is inadmissible under international law.
Article 15 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."
In custody, children endure:
-- blindfolding and painful shackling;
-- beatings;
-- violent shaking;
-- sleep depravation;
-- solitary confinement;
-- other forms of sensory deprivation;
-- no food and water for extended periods;
-- poor quality or inedible food when gotten;
-- no access to toilets, showers and clean clothes;
-- exposure to extreme heat or cold;
-- painful stress positions for extended periods;
-- sexual abuse;
-- threats, insults and cursing; and
-- extremely loud noises.
Often their parents and siblings are also arrested, beaten, detained, and their homes sometimes demolished.
After interrogation, detainees are processed for trial, sentencing, and imprisonment by one of two West Bank military courts, both on military bases. Decisions may be appealed in the Military Court of Appeals, but rarely ever will the High Court of Justice hear them.
Judges and prosecutors are military officers, some not certified by the Israeli Bar Association. Dispensing justice is nearly impossible under a system with no accepted standards. Children as young as 12 (and some younger) are prosecuted the same as adults, tribunals calling them adults at age 16, in contrast to Jews at age 18.
Under Military Order 132, six months is the maximum sentence for children aged 12 - 13; 12 months usually from 14 - 15 for offenses with a maximum penalty of less than five years; and unlimited for more serious offenses; under Military Order 378, 20 years for stone-throwing is permitted (the most common offense charged); and children 16 or older are considered adults and treated no differently.
Military courts deny judicial fairness, including:
-- the right to counsel until forced confessions are extracted, commonly by torture, pressure, intimidation, and at times trickery;
-- the right to prepare a proper defense with enough time, in adequate facilities, in confidence, with court documents in Arabic;
-- under Military Order 378, detainees may be denied counsel for up to 90 days;
-- under a grossly unjust system, attorneys commonly seek plea bargains to avoid trials and harsher sentences;
-- defendants, including young children are presumed guilty, full acquittals gotten in just 0.29% of cases;
-- the right to examine witnesses is restricted; few full evidentiary cases are heard; according to Yesh Din (volunteers for human rights), of 9,123 cases in 2006, only 130 (1.42%) got full evidentiary trials because having them is futile and punishments far harsher when convicted;
-- unlike in civil courts for Jews, Palestinians have no right to trial without undue delay:
(1) detention until a hearing before a judge - 24 hours for Jews; up to eight days for Palestinians;
(2) total detention period before indictment - 30 days for Jews, and up to 75 on authority of the Attorney General; up to 180 days for Palestinians;
(3) detention from end of investigation to indictment - 5 days for Jews; 10 days for Palestinians;
(4) detention from indictment until arraignment - 30 days for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians;
(5) detention from arraignment to end of proceedings - 9 months for Jews; up to two years for Palestinians; and
(6 ) judicial approval of detention extensions if proceedings continue - 3 months for Jews (per a Supreme Court judge); six months for Palestinians (per Military Court of Appeals judge).
In addition, defense lawyers rarely know charges until hearing days. Palestinian children are usually denied bail, and respect for their rights under international law is ignored.
Fourth Geneva's Article 147 requires fair trials, holding those responsible for denying them criminally liable.
Detention Conditions
Children as young as 12, and sometimes younger, endure overcrowding, poor ventilation, little or no access to natural light, poor quality (often inedible) and inadequate amounts of food, isolation, torture and abusive treatment.
Little or no education is provided, and none in interrogation and detention centers where children are often held for three months or longer. Also, with one exception, prisons are inside Israel in breach of Fourth Geneva's Article 76, stating:
"Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein."
The provision also requires providing proper food, medical care, and spiritual help - women in separate quarters, supervised by women, and minors getting special treatment.
Palestinian detainees get none of the above, including permits for family members to visit imprisoned relatives.
Common Complaints
From January 2001 - December 2008, "over 600 complaints were filed against Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators for alleged ill-treatment and torture." The Police Investigation Department and Justice Ministry conducted no investigations, claiming "insufficient evidence."
Relevant International Law
Torture, abuse, degrading and inhumane treatment are unequivocally prohibited at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.
Article 2(2) of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Its Article 1 defines it as follows:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Other relevant laws include Fourth Geneva, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, calling torture a crime against humanity in Article 7 and a war crime in Article 8.
These laws also prohibit other forms of abuse, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. In addition, all nations are obligated to prevent torture and other forms of abuse, and to prosecute offenders under its jurisdiction.
Fourth Geneva also mandates they search for and prosecute them under the universal jurisdiction (UJ) principle, relating to crimes of war, against humanity, genocide, or slavery. UJ is to ensure there's no place to hide.
Comments from Children During Arrests and Detention
-- "I went from having a normal life at home to handcuffs, deprivation of sleep, shouting, threats, rounds of interrogation and serious accusations. In these circumstances, life becomes dark, filled with fear and pessimism - tough days that words cannot describe."
-- "A soldier pointed his rifle at me. The rifle barrel was a few centimeters away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: 'shivering? Tell me where the pistol is before I shoot you.' "
-- After arrest, "they stripped us out of our trousers and T-shirts. They then started to throw stones at our backs while laughing and making fun of us."
-- "While we were walking to the gate, the soldiers hit us with their rifles in our backs and laughed."
-- "As soon as the jeep started to move, (a ) soldier who had pushed me, kicked me on my broken hand and beat me on my shoulders with his rifle."
-- Inside (a ) clinic, they beat me on the back and neck with their hands. One of the soldiers took a rope that was on the table and placed it around my neck and pressed tightly to suffocate me."
-- A soldier "hit me in the face with the barrel of his rifle and that led to my nose and mouth bleeding profusely. All of this happened in front of my mother who was begging them to let me go."
-- "I felt my hands were about to explode because they were tied so tight. I asked the soldiers to loosen the handcuffs but they responded by shouting and using very obscene language."
-- "I felt extreme pain in my neck and back. I felt dizzy and was about to vomit. Whenever I lifted my head up, the soldiers would shout at me."
-- "I was interrogated for three days. My hands and feet were tied to the wall in the shape of a cross. I spent one full day in this position. I felt extreme pain and swelling in my hands. The soldiers then moved me to solitary confinement where I spent 15 days. I used to urinate in the cell."
-- "After two hours, the interrogator producer another paper written in Hebrew and asked me to sign it, saying it was an approval (for medical treatment), so I signed it. It turned out later that I had signed a full confession."
Interrogations
After arrest and transfer, they usually begin straightaway with no right to counsel or an adult present. Unlike in Israel, they're not videotaped to hide incriminating evidence.
Commonly, children are kept painfully shackled, threatened, cursed, tortured and abused during the process, at times while hooded. Interrogations continue for days until coerced (or at times tricked) confessions are gotten.
DCI/Palestine "encountered (no) single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated."
Female Detainees
They comprise a small percent of the total, around 4% in 2008. Like others, female child prisoners are usually incarcerated in Israel with adults, in violation of international law prohibiting both practices.
One of many poignant images shows a teenage girl and the caption: "I am not a terrorist."
Another, on the Separation Wall, shows a young girl holding balloons on strings being lifted into the air to liberation.
Administrative Detention
Under Military Order 1591, Palestinians, including children, can be detained without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods that can last years.
Fourth Geneva's Article 42 and ICCPR's Article 4 permit them only if:
"the security of the state...makes it absolutely necessary (and only according to) regular procedure," excluding long-term renewable extensions.
Under Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), no:
"child should be deprived of his or her liberty arbitrarily and detention should only be used as a measure of last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time."
Most often, they're based on secret evidence, withheld from detainees and their counsel, making a proper defense impossible. At any time in 2008, up to 700 Palestinian, men, women and children were administratively detained, a procedure Israelis use against political leaders, human rights activists, protestors, and children accused of stone-throwing. It's also common for them to get multiple detention orders, renewed within days of their expected release.
Soldiers Justifying Palestinian Beatings and Abuse
On May 21, 2009, B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) called on the chief of staff and judge advocate general to investigate an item called: "A Blow is Sometimes an Integral Part of the Mission," presenting testimonies of Col. Itai Virob, commander of Kfir Brigade and Lt. Col. Shimon, commander of Shimshon Battalion.
They admitted authorizing harassment, violence, injurious, and at times lethal means, against Palestinians "to extract information (during) interrogation."
Col. Virob said:
"The mission is to try to upset the equilibrium of the neighborhood, village, or particular location, to get information....or to cause a hostile entity inside the village to make mistakes as a result or in reaction to actions of our forces, and thus disrupt his activity and expose it."
Tactics include "throwing stun grenades, breaking into a number of houses or institutions....arresting residents, seizing areas on rooftops, and the like....We will detain, interrogate and use suitable pressure on every person to get to the one terrorist. Of all the means of pressure that we use, the vast majority are against persons who are not involved."
Lt. Col. Shimon said:
"There are no exercises, nothing written (and to get information we) use force. These orders (include) routine use of violence and potentially injury-causing (acts, at times) lethal, against civilians, and harassing them, (even though they're) patently illegal," but are routinely used nonetheless.
It's a policy of premeditated state-sponsored terror against defenseless men, women and children. On May 15, 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture (monitoring Convention Against Torture violations) issued Concluding Observations and conclusions on Israeli practices, expressing grave concerns about:
-- torture, abuse, degrading and humiliating treatment during and after interrogations;
-- Palestinian children detained and interrogated without counsel and/or family members present;
-- torture used to extract confessions;
-- 700 Palestinian children detained annually and prosecuted in military courts affording no judicial fairness;
-- 95% of convictions based on coerced confessions;
-- prisons in Israel violate international law and impede family visits, and
-- administrative detentions violate Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture because of abusive interrogations, secret evidence, and long incarcerations.
Israel is a serial scofflaw, systematically scorning and violating international laws and norms with impunity. DCI/Palestine says torture and abuse remain unabated, "from the moment of arrest, and continue during transfer, interrogation and detention."
The practice is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command. This abusive system operates with the knowledge and assistance of some doctors, and is overseen by a military court system that ignores basic principles of juvenile justice and fair trial rights, whilst willfully turning a blind eye to the presentation in court of one coerced confession after another."
Israeli lawlessness is ignored by the world community that's obligated to act under international law, but won't. Short of enforced accountability, it's "unlikely that the situation endured by Palestinian children (their siblings, parents, and friends) described (above), will improve."
http://bit.ly/d9CN4V