Associated Press
November 11, 2001

JERUSALEM - Israeli authorities continue to torture Palestinian detainees, despite a 1999 Supreme Court ruling banning the practice, three human rights groups said Sunday.

One 16-year-old claimed he was soaked in freezing water, made to carry a heavy wooden beam while manacled and then beaten, the groups said in a report issued Sunday. An Arab woman said interrogators violently shook her during an interrogation.

Israel said the ban against torture remains in place, and that the alleged violations were being investigated.

A government report on the issue and a response from human rights groups will be submitted to a meeting of the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva, due to begin Monday. Copies of both were obtained by The Associated Press.

The joint rights groups' document contends that interrogators have repeatedly flouted the 1999 Supreme Court ban on torture, particularly since the outbreak of fighting between Israeli and the Palestinians 14 months ago.

"Torture and other forms of ill-treatment are still widely used against Palestinian detainees, both in GSS (General Security Service) interrogation facilities and by members of the Israeli army and police," the report says. The security service is also known by its Hebrew acronym, Shin Bet.

The report was prepared by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, or PCATI; the Palestinian rights group LAW and the Swiss-based World Organization Against Torture.

The report cites nine affidavits by Arab detainees saying they were interrogated with methods expressly forbidden under the 1999 ruling or by existing Israeli or international law. Overall, the groups say they have received about 20 reports of violations since the ruling was passed.

Among them are sleep deprivation, shackling a prisoner to a chair in painful positions for prolonged periods, the use of bad-smelling hoods, playing deafening sounds and beating, slapping and kicking.

"They ordered me to go outside, despite the freezing cold," Rami Zaul, a 16-year-old interrogated a year ago, said in an affidavit. "One of them grabbed my shirt and poured cold water on me. Afterward, he forced me to undress and I remained in my short-sleeved shirt and they continued to pour freezing water on my head."

Zaul said he was then forced, while handcuffed, to drag a wooden beam with one of his interrogators standing on it. "When I got tired and dropped it, I was beaten hard," he said.

The teen-ager said he was accused of preparing fire bombs and of throwing stones at Israelis. Rights workers documenting his case said they don't not know whether he has been released.

Interrogators also shake suspects to force a confession, said PCATI Executive Director Hannah Friedman. A Palestinian detainee died several years ago after being shaken, and the Supreme Court banned the practice.

Mona Obeid, a 30-year-old Israeli Arab woman, said in an affidavit that she was violently shaken during an interrogation by a Shin Bet agent last summer.

"He grabbed my shirt on both sides and started pulling and pushing me backward and forward forcefully," she said. "The force of the shaking would send me flying toward the wall which was behind me and my head would bang against the wall."

Obeid was not accused of any crime but was being questioned about her brother, Friedman said.

A draft of the Israeli government report prepared for the U.N. panel said "torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" of detainees are strictly forbidden.

Claims by Zaul and Obeid are among those being checked, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity. She said she could not comment on the claims until the inquiries are complete.

Israel's security service has issued a directive to all its personnel ordering strict compliance with the 1999 court ruling, the government report said.

"If any investigator will be found to have used physical pressure against a suspect during an investigation he will be disciplined and where necessary will be dismissed," it said.

However, PCATI said the inquiries are carried out by Shin Bet agents, and no interrogator has been tried in criminal court.