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<td class="articleTitle" valign="top"><big><big><b><span
id="DetailedTitle">Palestinian children 'abused' in Israeli jail </span></b>
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<div id="ctl00_cphBody_dvSummary" class="articleSumm">Recent
studies allege a system of abuse targeting children detained by
Israel's military court system.</div>
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<div id="dvByLine_Date"> <span id="ctl00_cphBody_dvByLine"
class="byLine"><a class="orangetext"
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/profile/dalia-hatuqa.html">Dalia Hatuqa</a></span><span
id="dvArticleDate"> Last Modified: <span id="ctl00_cphBody_lblDate">14
Aug 2012 16:38<br>
<small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/08/20128910267627456.html">http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/08/20128910267627456.html</a></small><br>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><strong><br>
Ramallah, occupied Palestinian territories -</strong> A dirty mattress
fills up a space barely two metres long and one metre wide. A
suffocating stench emanating from the toilet hovers over the windowless
room, and a light turned on 24/7 means sleep is a distant dream. This
is the infamous Cell 36 in Al Jalameh Prison in Israel. It's one of the
cells that many Palestinian children have either heard of or, worse,
been inside when placed in solitary confinement.</span></p>
<p><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The
children imprisoned here are most often taken from their homes between
midnight and 5am. Most don't even see it coming. In one case, in Beit
Ummar near Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers detained a Palestinian boy after
reportedly taking some of the house's doors off their hinges. Most of
the children detained live close to "friction points", areas close to
Israeli settlements, roads used by settlers or near the separation
wall. And their offence is almost always throwing stones at settlers or
troops.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">These
vivid details emerged recently in a report based on the testimonies of
more than 300 Palestinian children, which were collected over four
years. The study by Defence for Children International, <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/report_0.pdf"
target="_blank"><em>Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted: Children Held in
Military Detention</em></a> highlights a pattern of abuse towards
children detained under the Israeli military court system. In the past
11 years, DCI estimates that around 7,500 children, some as young as
12, have been detained, interrogated and imprisoned within this system.
This is about 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children every
day.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Mohammad
S, from the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem, was 16 when he was
arrested, according to the report. It was 2:30am when Israeli soldiers
dragged him out of bed. He was blindfolded and verbally abused and
taken to an unknown destination, where he says he was forced to lay
down in the cold for an hour. He was later taken to an interrogation
centre near Nablus at around 11am, and only then was he allowed to
drink some water and use the bathroom, after he underwent a strip
search. Tied and blindfolded still, he was then taken to Al Jalameh,
near Haifa in Israel. There he was taken to Cell 36, where he was
forced to spend his first night sleeping on the floor because there was
no mattress or blanket.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Mohammad
says he spent 17 days in solitary confinement in Cell 36 and Cell 37,
interrupted only by interrogations. Mohammad was reportedly
interrogated for two to three hours every day, while sitting on a low
seat with his hands tied to the chair.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span
style="font-size: 13px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The
most crucial hours</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"The
first 48 hours after a child is taken are the most important because
that's when the most abuse happens," DCI's lawyer Gerard Horton said.
Children taken from their homes in the night are blindfolded and bound
and made to lie face down or up on the floors of military vehicles,
according to the centre's report. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Very
rarely are parents told where their child is being taken, and, unlike
Israeli children from within either Israel or the settlements in the
occupied West Bank, Palestinian minors are reportedly not allowed to
have a parent present before or during initial interrogation, and
generally do not see a lawyer until after their interrogation is over.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Specifically,
Israeli children have access to a lawyer within 48 hours and those
under the age of 14 cannot be imprisoned. Palestinian children,
however, can be jailed even if they are as young as 12 and, like
adults, can be held in jail without having formal charges against them
for up to 188 days.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"The
key issue is one of equality. If two children, a Palestinian and an
Israeli, are caught throwing stones at each other, then one will be
processed in a juvenile justice system and one in a military court,"
Horton said.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"They
have completely different rights. It's hard to justify this after 45
years of occupation. It's not a question of whether offences are
committed. What we are saying is children should not be treated
completely differently."</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As
soon as children are taken from their homes, and placed inside an
Israeli military vehicle, they are often kicked or slapped, according
to testimonies obtained by DCI. Some said they were laughed at and
others said they heard cameras clicking.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span
style="font-size: 13px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Nightmares</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Because
children are often taken late at night, they are driven to the nearest
settlement to wait until Israeli police interrogators open up shop in
the morning. This means children are sometimes placed out in the cold
or rain for many hours. Requests for water or using the bathroom are
most often denied, and children are taken straight to interrogation
after a night of little sleep.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That's
what Ahmad F said happened to him. A 15-year-old from 'Iraq Burin
village, just outside Nablus, he was arrested in July 2011. He was
taken to the nearby Huwwara interrogation centre, where he was left
outside from 5am until 3pm. At one point, soldiers brought a dog. "They
brought the dog's food and put it on my head," Ahmad told DCI. "Then
they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I
tried to move away but [the dog] started barking. I was terrified."</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">During
interrogation, many children reported being facing with slurs and
threatened with physical violence. In a small number of cases,
interrogators have reportedly threatened minors with rape. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In
29 per cent of cases studied by DCI, Arabic-speaking children were
either shown or given documentation written in Hebrew to sign. An
Israeli spokesperson denied this to Al Jazeera, saying "the norm is
that interrogations in Arabic should be either recorded or written in
Arabic". Israeli officials did say, however, they had identified 13
cases from the report where children had signed a confession written in
Hebrew. Yet the spokesperson maintained that video recordings of those
interrogations had been available, should the lawyers acting for the
children doubt the accuracy of the written Hebrew statements.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">After
children sign a "confession", they are brought before an Israeli
military court. Since 2009, an Israeli spokesperson said, children have
faced juvenile military courts. Most often, that's the first time the
minor will see their lawyer. The confession is generally the primary
evidence against the child, say DCI officials. Other evidence will
often consist of a statement by an interrogator, and sometimes a
soldier.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Because
so few are granted bail, children face a legal dilemma: they can ask
the lawyer to challenge the system - and by doing so potentially wait,
locked up, for four to six months - or plead guilty and get a two or
three month prison sentence for a "first offence". </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span
style="font-size: 13px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Pleading
guilty</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"So,
very rarely does anyone challenge the system," said DCI's Horton, as
the quickest way to be released is to plead guilty. This goes some way
to explain why, according to the military courts, the conviction rate
for adults and children in 2010 was <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/nearly-100-of-all-military-court-cases-in-west-bank-end-in-conviction-haaretz-learns-1.398369"
target="_blank">99.74 per cent</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">According
to DCI, some fifty to sixty per cent of the time, children are taken to
prisons inside Israel, making it difficult for parents to visit. "Some
parents are denied permits on unspecified 'security grounds'. For the
others, the bureaucracy can take up to two months to get a permit,
which means if their children are sentenced to less time, they will not
receive a visit," Horton said. "However, some permits are processed in
less than two months, and those children sentenced to more time will
also generally receive visits."</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>The allegations of what
seems to be a deliberate system of abuse appear to be corroborated by
another <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.childreninmilitarycustody.org/" target="_blank">report
</a>published by a group of British jurists. The UK
government-backed delegation of nine lawyers, with human rights, crime
and child welfare backgrounds, concluded that Israel's soldiers
regularly breach<a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm" target="_blank"> </a>the
<a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm" target="_blank">UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> (UNCRC) and the <a
class="InternalLink" href="http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/380"
target="_parent">Fourth Geneva Convention</a>, of which Israel is a
signatory.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Their
report, <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.childreninmilitarycustody.org/" target="_blank"><em>Children
in Military Custody</em></a>, attributed much of Israel's reluctance to
treat Palestinian children in accordance with international norms to "a
belief, which was advanced to us by a military prosecutor, that every
Palestinian child is a 'potential terrorist'". The lawyers said this
seemed to be "the starting point of a spiral of injustice, and one
which only Israel, as the Occupying Power in the West Bank, can
reverse".</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Israel's
practice of holding children "for substantial periods in solitary
confinement would, if it occurred, be capable of amounting to torture",
the report concluded. Of all the children represented by DCI, 12 per
cent reported being held in solitary confinement for an average of 11
days.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span
style="font-size: 13px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Denial</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The
Israel Security Agency (ISA), also known as Shin Bet, denied that
children were mistreated under the military court system, calling
claims to the contrary "utterly baseless". The ISA also said that
claims regarding the prevention of legal counsel were also completely
groundless.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"No
one questioned, including minors being questioned, is kept alone in a
cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession," said
the ISA in a statement when the <em>Guardian</em> first released<a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/26/israel-palestinian-children-injustice"
target="_blank"> a special report </a>about the status of child
detainees in Israel.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The
ISA also said that it provides minors special protection because of
their age and adheres to "international treaties of which the State of
Israel is a signatory, and according to Israeli law, including the
right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross".</span></p>
<p>Speaking to Al Jazeera, an Israeli spokesperson accused the
DCI report of bias, and refuted the group's finding that the majority
of children prosecuted were charged with throwing stones: "This was the
basis for only 40 per cent of the indictments filed against minors in
the West Bank ... the young age of offenders is not relevant to the
gravity of the act: it has been proven beyond doubt that a stone thrown
by a 15-year-old child can be no less fatal than a stone thrown by an
adult."</p>
<p>Stone-throwing can prove deadly, stressed the spokesperson,
citing a case from September 2011, when an Israeli settler and his
one-year-old son were killed after their car overturned as a result of
stones hurled at them. "Two Palestinians from Halhul confessed to
throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The
stone was hurled from a driving car," the spokesperson said. The
official said that children were also involved in grenade throwing, the
use of explosives, shooting and assault</p>
<p>The spokesperson also denied that the ISA used isolation as an
interrogation technique or as punishment to exert confessions out of
minors. "There are certain cases in which an interrogee will be held
alone for a few days at the most, in order to prevent information in
his/her possession from leaking to other terrorist activists in the
same detention facility, which could compromise the interrogation of
the suspect. Note that even in these cases, the interrogee is not held
in absolute confinement, but is entitled to meet with Red Cross
representatives, medical staff etc."</p>
<p>Furthermore, the spokesperson rejected the idea that pleading
guilty was the quickest way out of the system for a defendant, deeming
the accusation "misleading, distorted, and premised upon incorrect
information".</p>
<p>"Should a minor defendant choose to plead 'not guilty' and
challenge the prosecutorial evidence by proceeding to a full trial and
mounting a good-faith defence, military courts will, in the vast
majority of the cases, conduct the hearings very efficiently, sometimes
even in a few weeks."</p>
<p><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Yet,
since the DCI and UK reports came out, "there's no substantive change
on the ground", Horton said. "The response by the military authorities
has been to start talking about making some changes and amending the
military orders. But when you look at the details, the changes are of
little substance."</span></p>
<p><span
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"In
reality, what we are seeing is a <em>de facto</em> annexation of most
of the West Bank; it's not a temporary military occupation," he
concluded. "The military courts are an integral part of this process
used to control the population." </span> </p>
<p><em>Follow Dalia Hatuqa on Twitter: <a class="InternalLink"
href="https://twitter.com/DaliaHatuqa" target="_blank">@DaliaHatuqa</a></em></p>
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