[News] Rights groups challenge Israeli secret service impunity

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Rights groups challenge Israeli secret service impunity

http://electronicintifada.net/content/rights-groups-challenge-israeli-secret-service-impunity/10020

<http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada>The 
Electronic Intifada
30 May 2011

For Omar Said, the time he spent in the custody 
of Israeli secret service agents ­ and the 
emotional ordeal that accompanied his 
interrogation and detention ­ won’t soon be forgotten.

“You can’t imagine how many hours and how many 
questions. [The secret service agents] were all 
the time with me. It’s like your shadow, all the 
time with you,” Said told The Electronic 
Intifada. “This measure is very, very heavy and 
very, very effective. Many of the people can be 
convinced [to confess to anything] just to get some rest.”

A pharmacologist and expert in traditional Arab 
medicine based in the Galilee region, Said was 
arrested by agents from Israel’s General Security 
Service (GSS, also known as the Shin Bet or 
Shabak, according to its Hebrew acronym) on 24 
April 2010 at the King Hussein/Allenby border crossing with Jordan.

Shortly after being stopped at the border, Said 
explained that Shabak agents searched his car, 
home and office and seized files and computers, 
including those of his children. He later learned 
that he was being accused of having contact with 
a foreign agent ­ a man with connections to the 
Lebanese resistance movement Hizballah ­ while on 
vacation in Egypt. He was also accused of 
endangering the security of the State of Israel.

“They took me to [Shabak prison in] Petach Tikva 
[for investigation]. They put me in a very small 
cell. It’s very dirty and it was cold all the 
time because they used air conditioning. The 
light was on all the time,” said Said, who is 
also active in the Balad party, a Palestinian political party in Israel.

After spending several days on virtually no sleep 
and under continued interrogation, Said explained 
that he was transferred to another Shabak-run 
prison facility in Ashkelon. There, the interrogations continued.

“They [held] me 18 or 17 days without meeting my 
lawyer. I felt it was like two years when you are 
there alone, you feel isolated and [like] you 
will be a victim [because they can do anything 
they want]. This is a very, very, very dangerous situation,” Said said.

Around the time that Said was arrested, 
Haifa-based Palestinian political activist 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/ameer-makhoul>Ameer 
Makhoul was also detained by Shabak and 
interrogated under the same pretenses: that he 
had made contact with an agent of Hizballah and 
was a danger to Israeli security.

Makhoul 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/plea-deal-only-option-political-prisoner-ameer-makhoul/9100>signed 
a plea deal in his case late last year, and was 
sentenced to nine years in prison in January 
2011. Said, for his part, was charged with 
“servicing an illegal organization” after 
agreeing to a plea bargain and sentenced to seven months in prison.

He was released in September 2010.

“[Shabak] can do whatever they want but I think 
they are also very, very careful,” Said told The 
Electronic Intifada. “They can choose their 
targets. There is logic behind this. It’s not 
just to take people and put them in prison. They 
want to send a message to the people.”

Challenging inhuman and degrading conditions

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority rights 
in Israel, and Nadi al-Aseer, the Palestinian 
Prisoners’ Club, filed a pre-petition on 11 May 
demanding an end to detention in prison facilities run by Shabak.

Presented to the Israeli Attorney General, the 
Minister of Internal Security and the Head of the 
Israeli Prison Service (IPS), the pre-petition 
argued that holding detainees in Shabak-run 
facilities ­ the Ashkelon, Jalameh, Petach Tikva 
and Russian Compound facilities ­ should stop due 
to “the inhuman and degrading conditions to which 
detainees are subjected in them” 
(“<http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=12_05_11>Adalah 
and Nadi al-Aseer Demand an End to the Detention 
of Palestinian Detainees in Shabak Facilities Due 
to Inhuman and Degrading Conditions,” 12 May 2011).

“The pre-petition is targeting the physical 
conditions of the Shabak interrogation cells,” 
Adalah attorney Abeer Baker, who presented the 
pre-petition on behalf of Adalah, told The Electronic Intifada.

“What we asked first is to close these cells as 
long as the conditions there are not improved. 
The second issue we said [is] that all of the 
physical conditions of the detainees should be 
equal, whether they are security or criminal 
detainees. We asked a demand for external 
supervision of these cells,” she added.

Baker explained that after Shabak agents 
interrogate security detainees ­ detainees who 
are suspected of being a security threat to the 
State of Israel ­ the detainees are sent into 
very narrow cells, similar to cells used for 
solitary confinement, in an attempt to break their spirit.

According to Baker, the Shabak facilities are 
also not inspected or supervised by external 
bodies. Human rights organizations examine the 
physical conditions of prisons of every other 
Israeli prison in the country, but not the Shabak 
facilities, thereby making them exempt from 
outside scrutiny and accountability, Baker said.

“These bad conditions are made on purpose in 
order to affect the personality of the detainee 
and make him confess and break him, break his spirit,” Baker said.

“We are talking about the dignity of detainees, a 
process that should be monitored by law,” Baker 
added. “We are not talking about something which 
is not embodied in law. We are talking about the 
right for dignity. These are the basic 
constitutional rights of every detainee.”

In the case of detainees and prisoners, Article 
10 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political 
Rights states that “all persons deprived of their 
liberty shall be treated with humanity and with 
respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Regarding Palestinians from the occupied West 
Bank and Gaza who are also often detained and 
interrogated by Shabak agents inside Israel, 
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention 
stipulates that “individual or mass forcible 
transfers, as well as deportations of protected 
persons from occupied territory to the territory 
of the Occupying Power or to that of any other 
country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

“They violate international law which demands 
that putting people under custody must maintain 
dignity. Especially people from occupied 
territories, you have the Geneva Conventions 
which demands this also,” Baker said.

“By interrogating these people in these 
facilities, they are facilitating the process to 
criminalize the Palestinian people to put them behind bars. It’s political.”

Shabak impunity cemented in Israeli law

In 1987, the Landau Commission ­ an Israeli 
governmental commission charged with examining 
the interrogation methods used by the Israeli 
General Security Services ­ found that the 
continued use of “physical force” in interrogations was acceptable.

Twelve years later, in 1999, the Israeli high 
court finally prohibited torture of any kind in 
Israel, and outlawed certain interrogation 
techniques. In “ticking time bomb” situations, 
however, the court found that the use of physical force could be justified.

This caveat, otherwise known as “the necessity 
defense,” has been used to justify the use of 
physical force and torture by Shabak 
interrogators since the high court’s ruling. 
While meant only for use in extreme cases, human 
rights groups have criticized the “ticking time 
bomb” defense for its widespread and inappropriate use.

The GSS argues that its agents should be exempt 
from criminal prosecution during these types of 
situations due to Article 34K of Israel’s Penal 
Code, which states that “no person shall bear 
criminal responsibility for an act that was 
immediately necessary in order to save his own or 
another person’s life, freedom, bodily welfare or 
property from a real danger of severe injury, due 
to the conditions prevalent when the act was 
committed, there being no alternative but to commit the act.”

According to a December 2009 report released by 
the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel 
(PCATI), Shabak interrogators “are protected by 
layers of concealment, the withholding of 
information, and immunity shielding them like the layers of an onion.”

Titled “Accountability Denied: The Absence of 
Investigation and Punishment of Torture in 
Israel,” the PCATI report found that the levels 
of protection include the fact that Shabak 
employees are not required to identify 
themselves, that Shabak interrogations are exempt 
from any video or audio documentation, and that 
detainees are denied from speaking with an 
attorney or anyone else from the “outside world” 
during most of the interrogation process 
(“<http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/Accountability_Denied_Eng.pdf>Accountability 
Denied,” December 2009 [PDF]).

A “facade of investigations into complaints of 
torture and abuse” also points to the impunity 
with which Shabak (GSS) interrogators operate, the report found.

“Complaints of torture by GSS interrogators 
submitted to the Attorney General are forwarded 
for inspection by the Officer in Charge of GSS 
Interrogee Complaints (OCGIC), a function filled 
by a GSS agent. Thus complaints of torture during 
GSS interrogations are examined by a GSS employee 
who does not constitute an independent or 
impartial investigator,” the report stated.

As such, more than 600 complaints have been 
submitted between 2001 and 2008 about 
mistreatment by Shabak interrogators, but not a 
single complaint has developed into a criminal 
investigation, according to the PCATI report.

In late March of this year, various 
nongovernmental organizations ­ including Adalah, 
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and PCATI ­ 
petitioned the Israeli high court to investigate 
the mistreatment and torture of detainees at the hands of Shabak interrogators.

According to PCATI, this latest petition aims to 
bring an end “the long standing refusal of the 
Attorney General to open criminal inquiries into 
cases of alleged torture and ill treatment which 
has effectively granted long-term immunity from 
prosecution to interrogators who use illegal 
methods that have and continue to include torture 
and ill treatment” 
(“<http://www.stoptorture.org.il/en/node/1701>PCATI 
Petitions the High Court of Justice: Order the 
Attorney General to Investigate Torture and Ill treatment,” 23 March 2011).

Cutting ties to the outside world

According to Omar Said, while he wasn’t tortured 
during Shabak custody, his interrogation and 
imprisonment were extremely difficult experiences that still affect him today.

“A man like me who was arrested many times, it 
was very hard and difficult for me. I can’t 
imagine what will happen to other people who 
haven’t been arrested before [to be arrested by Shabak],” Said said.

By persecuting Palestinian political leaders, 
Shabak is trying to intimidate the Palestinian 
community inside Israel and cut its ties to the wider Arab world, Said said.

“He told me from the beginning: we will teach the 
Arab population here how to behave and who [they 
can] contact. The first day, the Shabak 
interrogator said that. He said, ‘We cannot live 
with that connection that you made, and the Arabs 
here made, with the Arabs outside Israel,’” he recalled.

“We are activists in our societies and we 
represent the new generation of the community and 
we have wide connections with Arab activists and 
social activists. They want to cut these relationships.”




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