[Ppnews] How Israel legitimizes torturing Palestinians to death

[Political Prisoner News]

  How Israel legitimizes torturing Palestinians to death

Israel's policy of torture has left many dead and completely lacks 
accountability.
Last Modified: 25 Feb 2013 11:25

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322511744515745.html

Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the 
Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - 
and the day of his death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met 
with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet's 
Kishon interrogation facility.

Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat 
told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced 
to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.

When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who 
leaves a pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. 
However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In 
fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in 
fine cardiovascular health.

What the final autopsy did find 
<http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=568699>, however, was 
that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body 
and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and 
legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.

The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel's 
Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel's 
prisons. According to the prisoners' rights organisation Addameer, since 
1967, a total of 72 Palestinians 
<http://www.addameer.org/etemplate.php?id=578> have been killed as a 
result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month 
before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody 
in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.

The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and 
its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 
700 Palestinians <http://www.btselem.org/torture/impunity> lodged 
complaints with the State Attorney's Office but not a single one has 
been criminally investigated.

Writing in Adalah's 2012 publication, /On Torture 
<http://adalah.org/Public/files/English/Publications/On%20Torture%20%28English%29.pdf> 
/[PDF], Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the 
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, "The GSS's impunity 
is absolute."

Israel's High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin 
Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and 
thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.

In August of 2012, Israel's High Court rejected 
<http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-high-court-denies-bid-to-probe-alleged-torture-by-shin-bet-1.456438> 
petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the 
Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli 
attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations 
into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.

And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, 
the High Court of Justice threw out 
<http://www.adalah.org/eng/Articles/1920/Supreme-Court-rejects-petition-against-GSS-from-to> 
Adalah's petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all 
of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United 
Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.

In May 2009, UNCAT condemned 
<http://adalah.org/upfiles/ConcludingObservations/CAT-Concluding%20Observations%20%282009%29.pdf> [PDF] 
Israel for exempting the Shin Bet's interrogations from audio and video 
recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative 
measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the 
Knesset extended <http://www.adalah.org/eng/?mod=articles&ID=1810> the 
exemption for another three years.

Rationalising its failure to comply with this most basic requirement of 
recording interrogations, the State maintains that it is in the 
interests of "national security" that its interrogation techniques not 
be made public.

Arafat was killed under torture. Torture is routine. But the following 
is not routine: upon the announcement of his death, thousands of 
Palestinians, already unified in solidarity with the arduous struggle 
waged by Palestinian hunger striking prisoners, responded in force. At 
least 3,000 prisoners 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21564604> refused their 
meals; thousands 
<http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/news/features/6017-photos-thousands-in-gaza-protest-death-of-arafat-jaradat.html> 
poured into the streets of Gaza and impassioned demonstrations 
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d504cdd8-7e9a-11e2-9080-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2LrtzzhCd> 
erupted across the West Bank. While the State of Israel continues to 
deploy its deadly arsenal of weapons to repress Palestinians, the 
banality of the evil of this regime is, as it will always be, eclipsed 
by the mighty Palestinian will for self-determination.

/*Charlotte Silver is a journalist based in San Francisco and the West 
Bank. She is a graduate of Stanford University. */

/*Follow her on Twitter: @CharEsilver 
<https://twitter.com/#%21/CharESilver>*/

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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