Human Rights Watch conducts regular, systematic investigations
of human rights abuses in some seventy countries around the world.
it addresses the human rights practices of goverl1ments of all
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Summary and Recommendations
Israel's two main interrogation agencies in the Occupied
Territories engage in a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and
torture - according to internationally recognized definitions of
the terms - when trying to extract from Palestinian security
suspects confessions or information about third parties. This
pattern has continued in 1994, despite the peace process now
underway.
Israel's ill-treatment of Palestinians under interrogation is
notable for the enormous number of persons who have experienced it.
Well over 100,000 Palestinians have been detained since the start
of the Intifada in December 1987. Of those arrested, reliable
sources indicate that some 4,000 to 6,000 are subjected to
interrogations each year. The figures appear to have declined only
slightly during the first quarter of 1994.
The overriding strategy of Israel's interrogation agencies in
getting uncooperative detainees to talk is to subject them to a
coordinated, rigid and increasingly painful regime of physical
constraints and psychological pressures over days and very often
for three or four weeks, during which time the detainees are,
almost without exception, denied visits by their lawyers and
families. These measures seriously taint the voluntariness of the
confessions that they help to bring about, and therefore compromise
the fundamental fairness of the military courts that try
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
The methods used in nearly all interrogations are prolonged sleep
deprivations; prolonged sight deprivations using blindfolds or
tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged maintenance of body
positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal threats and
insults.
These methods are almost always combined with some of the following
abuses: confinement in tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to
temperature extremes, such as in deliberately overcooled rooms;
prolonged toilet and hygiene deprivation; and degrading treatment,
such as forcing detainees to eat and use the toilet at the same
time. In a large number of cases, detainees are also moderately or
severely beaten by their interrogators.
Israeli interrogations consistently use methods in combination with
one another, over long periods of time. Thus a detainee in the
custody of the General Security Service (GSS) may spend weeks
during which, except for brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny
chair to which he is painfully shackled; to a stifling tiny cubicle
in which he can barely move; questioning sessions in which he is
beaten or violently manhandled; and then back to the chair.
The intensive, sustained, and combined use of these methods
inflicts the severe mental or physical suffering that is central to
internationally accepted definitions of torture.
Israel's political leadership cannot claim ignorance that
ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centers. The number of
victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic. Official
acquiescence is indicated also by the extreme infrequency with
which abuses are punished, and the fact that the classified
guidelines for GSS interrogators actually permit, under certain
circumstances, the use of "moderate" physical pressure to obtain
information. Since 1988, there has been only one case in which GSS
interrogators were jailed for abusing a detainee under
interrogation.
There are further obstacles to accountability for abuse:
Many prison doctors and paramedics, in violation of the ethics of
their profession, tend to serve the interests of the interrogation
agency more than they serve the health interests of the detainee.
Rather than ensuring that their patients are not subjected to
illegal or health-endangering ill-treatment, these medical
personnel tend to intervene in the interrogation process only in
order to avert permanent injuries or death; and
Palestinian defendants seeking to use the available legal procedure
to challenge the voluntariness, and thus, the admissibility, of
their confessions, face delays, pressures and obstacles that
prejudice this important right.
The abuses documented in this report took place between 1992 and
1994.
Comparing this period to interrogations during earlier years as
they were documented by other human rights organizations, some
trends emerge:
The GSS now resorts less frequently to beatings while relying more
extensively on sustained psychological pressures and physical
pressures, such as shackling detainees in contorted body positions,
which fall short of direct violence but cause severe suffering
nonetheless; and IDF interrogations have become more standardized:
beating is still the norm, but instances of extreme violence are
less common.
Despite these trends, the interrogation practices of both agencies
continue to constitute a pattern of torture.
Recommendations to the Government of Israel
Human Rights Watch call on the government of Israel to end the
practice of torture and ill-treatment of detainees under
interrogation, by adhering to and enforcing the provisions of the
United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against
Torture). Israel acceded to the Convention in 1991. Under Article
2, Israel is obliged to take "effective legislative,
administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of
torture." To fulfill that obligation, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
and his government should:
Enact domestic enabling legislation that makes the Convention
against Torture enforceable in Israeli courts;
Publicly state that the provisions of the Convention apply to the
conduct of all state agents in the Occupied Territories;
Make public all existing guidelines relating to the use of pressure
during interrogation, including the secret appendix to the Landau
Commission report and subsequent modification of it, so that their
compliance with international standards and Israeli law can be
assessed;
Revoke those clauses of the GSS interrogation guidelines that
permit the use of physical force despite its prohibition in
Israel's Penal Code; and
Review and revise the regulations and practices surrounding
investigative detention so as to strengthen safeguards against
abuse.
Human Rights Watch urges the U.S. administration to address
Israel's systematic use of torture against Palestinians under
interrogation through both enhanced public reporting and enhanced
advocacy. We urge the administration to:
State publicly that Israeli practices during the interrogation of
Palestinians amount to systematic torture, and that one of the two
state bodies most responsible for the torture of Palestinians under
interrogation is the Israel Defense Forces, which is the main
beneficiary of $1.8 billion in U.S. security aid to Israel
annually.
Inform the government of Israel that future aid levels will depend
on palpable progress toward curbing these abuses; and
Request from the government of Israel a progress report on the
steps taken to curtail such practices, including specific
information about the measures taken against abusive
personnel.
If the pattern of torture continues, the U.S. should either suspend
aid or explain publicly the extraordinary circumstances that
necessitate its continuation, as required by U.S. law.
Human Rights Watch urges the European member states acting
individually and in concert, to stress to the government of Israel
that good political and economic relations will depend on steps
taken to eliminate the practice of torture in the Occupied
Territories.
Introduction
This report documents a pattern of ill-treatment and torture by
Israeli interrogators questioning Palestinian detainees from the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The report, which is based on
thirty-six lengthy interviews that Human Rights Watch (HRW)
conducted with male security suspects1 who were interrogated
between June 1992 and March 1994, charges that these practices have
continued on a systematic basis since Yitzhak Rabin became prime
minister - and even since September 1993, when the current
government co-signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization a
Declaration of Principles on negotiating Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The testimony of Palestinians who underwent interrogations was
corroborated by interviews with soldiers who served in the IDF
detention camps, court testimony by security force agents, medical
reports and other information.
In fact, the extraction of confession under duress, and the
acceptance into evidence of such confession by the military courts
form the backbone of Israel's military justice system. The end
product of that system is one of the world's highest of
imprisonment.2 Nearly all military court trials end in convictions
- according to official statistics, of the 83,321 Palestinians
tried in military courts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between
1988 and 1993, only 2,731, or 3.2 percent were acquitted.3
While not every Palestinian detainee confesses, the signed
statements obtained through interrogations usually constitute the
main piece of evidence against defendants. Because a defendant's
signed statement is almost sufficient to convict him or her under
the applicable laws of evidence, interrogators have strong
incentives to obtain such a statement. And whether or not detainees
incriminate themselves, they are frequently pressured to speak
about others, who can then be convicted on the basis of third party
confessions.
Abuses that occur during interrogation and during the trial cannot
be seen in isolation from one another: they are interdependent. For
example, pressures to plea bargain and inordinate delays in trial
scheduling deter detainees from mounting court challenges to their
confessions. This allows interrogators to escape what might
otherwise be significant scrutiny of their methods.
Israel's ill-treatment of Palestinians under interrogation is
distinguished not only by its conveyor-belt quality but also by the
huge number of persons who experience it. Over 100,000 Palestinians
had been detained since the start of the Intifada in December 1987,
the IDF told us in July 1993.4 The Israeli human rights
organization B'Tselem charged that roughly 5,000 Palestinians per
year had been subjected during interrogation to some combination of
the methods of torture or ill-treatment documented in its 1991
study on interrogations.5 Information from reliable sources
indicates that during 1993 the volume of interrogations remained
close to this level.
Throughout 1993 some four hundred to six hundred Palestinians were
under interrogation on any given day, according to reliable
estimates. Since the majority of interrogations last one month or
less, we can infer that the number of Palestinians who passed
through interrogation during 1993 was over 4,000 and perhaps
substantially higher. To our knowledge, the government of Israel
has never provided figures on the number of Palestinians
interrogated.6
Nearly all Palestinians undergoing interrogation are put through
some combination of the same basic methods, although the duration
varies from case to case. Thus the number of Palestinians tortured
or severely ill-treated while under interrogation during the
Intifada is in the tens of thousands a number that becomes
especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of
adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip is under three-quarters of one million.
The Israeli government maintains that there is no pattern of
torture by its interrogators in the Occupied Territories. Abuses
are exceptional, it states, and each time there is evidence of a
"deviation from the permissible," it is investigated, and if
wrongdoing is found, the perpetrators are disciplined or charged.
The GSS is permitted to use "exceptional" measures against certain
categories of detainees. These methods, delineated in guidelines
that remain classified, include forms of what authorities
characterize as "moderate physical pressure" to obtain information
or statements. According to the government, the use of physical
force, which would otherwise violate Israeli law, is carefully
monitored to ensure that it does not violate the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (hereinafter the Convention against Torture) ratified by
Israel in 1991.
As this report demonstrates, however, methods of torture and severe
ill-treatment constitute more the rule than the exception, Contrary
to the image that the Israeli government seeks to project, abusive
methods are routinely practised even on suspects who are not
accused of involvement in plotting or participating in attacks
involving firearms or explosives. Often, they are accused of
membership in an illegal organization, and eventually charged with
that offense alone.
Government-Approved Abuse
Few of the abuses documented in this report are isolated
occurrences. They are practised with a considerable degree of
consistency system-wide, and with virtual impunity for the
practitioners. The abuses are clearly being carried out with the
knowledge of the government - although officials deny that the
methods constitute torture.
A disturbing phenomenon that is documented in this report is the
involvement of Israeli medical personnel in the abusive
interrogation process. While HRW has no evidence to suggest that
doctors or medics have participated directly and actively in
abuses, they have routinely checked and monitored the health of
Palestinian detainees during interrogation, while remaining silent
on the evidence of abuses confronting them.
The most infamous aspect of what has been publicly divulged of the
GSS guidelines is the authorization of unspecified means of
"moderate physical pressure" to obtain information and statements.
This phrase came in the 1987 report of the Landau Commission, which
was appointed by the government to investigate the interrogation
methods of the GSS. The specific methods it recommended were
contained in a classified appendix to the Commission's report, and
have been reviewed and modified by inter-ministerial committees
since their adoption by the Israeli cabinet in 1987.
Although the specific guidelines have never been revealed,
government approval of the techniques of hooding, position abuse7
sleep deprivation and confinement in closet-like spaces is made
abundantly clear by the system-wide employment of specialized
equipment (such as tiny chairs, mechanically refrigerated stalls,
and shackle attachments built into walls), and by the fact that
interrogators admit in open court, readily and without fear of
sanction, to practising these techniques. As this report argues, a
calibrated system of what could be characterized as "low-intensity
torture" operates under government supervision.
Techniques of Abuse
While the abuses described in this report are generally employed in
such a way as to cause no lasting, visible physical harm, they
occasionally cause long-term injury and even death. Since 1992,
four Palestinians have died while under interrogation; in some of
these cases, ill-treatment or torture, combined with medical
negligence, appear to have contributed substantially to the death.
In other cases, Palestinians have emerged from interrogation with
lasting psychological and/or emotional damage.
Torture and International Law
The government of Israel as mentioned above, admits that the GSS
employs "moderate" physical and psychological pressure during
interrogations, but claims that the agency guidelines explicitly
prohibit torture and degrading treatment. 8 A petition challenging
this claim was filed before Israel's Supreme Court, but in 1993 the
Court declined to hear the claim, on the grounds that the
petitioner's case lacked the requisite degree of case-based
concreteness.
While denying that the approved methods constitute torture or
ill-treatment, Israeli officials point out that a courtroom remedy
is available to any Palestinian detainee who wishes to challenge
the voluntariness of his or her confession.
The peace process, we found, has yet to trickle into the
interrogation rooms: if a detainee is brought in for an earnest
interrogation, he is likely to be subjected to some combination of
several of the following abuses: sleep deprivation, verbal insults,
prolonged position abuse, hooding or blindfolding, enclosure in
closet-like spaces, subjection to temperature extremes and to
distressing and continuous noise. He is also likely to be beaten,
especially if the interrogators are from the IDF.
The prospect of ill-treatment does not hinge on whether the
detainee is suspected of violence offense. Our sample, in fact,
under-represents persons suspected of grave offenses, who might be
expected to face even harsher interrogation methods. Nine of the
ten ex-detainees we interviewed had been released without charge
after their interrogation and the tenth had been released on
bail.
Two interrogations conducted in late 1993 illustrate the ongoing
problem:
On November 10, Bassem Tamimi of Ramallah was rushed to Hadassah
hospital in Jerusalem, where a CAT scan revealed a cerebral
hemorrhage. The hemorrhage was due to a very recent trauma,
according to a member of the medical staff who spoke with human
rights lawyer Tamar Pelleg-Sryck. Tamimi had been brought to the
hospital from Ramallah prison, where he was under interrogation by
the GSS, He had been arrested the day before in a round-up of
several suspected members of a rogue Fatah unit that had abducted
and killed Jewish settler Chaim Mizrahi on October 29,9 Tamimi
described what happened to him after his arrest and arrival at the
GSS wing at Ramallah prison:
They hooded me, and then took me straight to an interrogation
office. They took my hood off. It was about six in the evening. In
the interrogation room, there was a small chair. An interrogator
tied my hands to the back of the chair, and left me there with the
hood on.
Tamimi said he remained on the chair all night, except for a trip
to the toilet. In the morning an interrogator code-named "Abu
Ghazal" came in and began questioning him about various matters.
Then the subject turned to the killing of Mizrahi:
From that minute, he started to beat me, and all the questions were
only about the Mizrahi killing. He grabbed my chin and began to
flip my head back and forth, very powerfully. He did that
continuously. Then he started shaking it right and left, twisting
my neck from side to side.
Then he made me stand up. He grabbed me by the shoulder, and began
to push me back and forth violently. He would come up close to me,
hold my shirt, and then thrust his hands out very quickly, and then
pull me back up to him. When he did that, my head flapped back and
forth very quickly. He did this many times ...
At one point, I was kneeling on the ground, my legs tied together
and my hands cuffed behind my back. "Abu Ghazal" sat on one of
these revolving office chairs, the kind that go up and down when
you turn them. He screwed the seat of his chair down very low until
it trapped my knees between the seat and the floor. Then he grabbed
my chin and yanked it back and forth. When he did that, I fell
backwards very quickly. He then pulled me up, and did it again.
Sometimes, when I was on the ground, he would grab my collar and
shake me like he did when I was standing.
When he was doing the pushing with the seat, ( felt as if my brain
was rolling around loose it hurt so much ...
At first, he was asking me only about the Mizrahi case. Then, he
started asking me questions about a "wanted" person caught in my
house a year ago. He also said that someone else had said that
there were weapons hidden in my house. Then he said, "( won't ask
you about that other stuff. ( want you only to talk about the
killing of Chaim Mizrahi. If you do not talk you will be killed.
You have two choices: to talk or to die. Don't bet that because you
were interrogated before you can withstand this ... Your case is
very serious. You either confess or you die."
He started shaking me again, but even more violently. He kept
asking about Mizrahi. Then he pulled me up so that I was standing,
knees bent, with my back to the wall. If I tried to sink down to
the ground, he pulled me up to my feet. If I stood up straight, he
smacked the top of my head with his hand, forcing me back down. I
stood that way, knees bent, for about half an hour. He then put me
back on the ground, screwed the chair down again, and trapped my
knees, and began pushing and shaking again. He was sitting at one
point on my knees, and I was feeling very sick and dizzy. Then, all
of a sudden I fainted, I woke up five days later in the hospital
with the injury.
Tamimi said he did not know whether the cerebral hemorrhage he
suffered was caused by a blow, or hitting his head on the chair or
floor as he fainted. The diagnosis, however, suggests a
higher-velocity impact than a simple fall. Tamimi underwent surgery
and spent four weeks recovering, most of it in a Prison Service
hospital, and was then released without charge.
Tamimi's lawyer, Jawad Boulos, submitted formal complaints to the
Justice Ministry and the Israeli police, demanding to know the
results of any investigation into the case. (The Israeli press had
reported in November that an investigation had been opened.) 10 As
of March 16, Boulos told HRW, he had received no reply from the
authorities.
N.S., a nineteen-year-old university student from Ramallah, was
interrogated for thirty days in November and December by IDF
interrogators at al-Far'a detention center. N.S. was charged with
membership in Hamas, and writing and distributing leaflets and
posters for that organization. He was released on bail.
The abuses at al-Far'a he described resemble those recounted by
detainees held there in earlier periods:
Shabeh [enforced sitting or standing while blindfolded and
handcuffed] consisted mostly of standing from nine in the morning
until eight at night, in the courtyard. Some days I stood all the
time, with no food, or no visit to the toilet. This happened four
or five times. Sometimes they would put me instead on a stone seat
in the yard.
Sometimes, I was put in a leaky, damp "closet" [a closet-sized
room) ...for eight or ten hours, other times for three or four
hours. In the "closet" you sit all the time. You can't move. The
guards come around and bang on the door, Often, people relieved
themselves in the "closet" because they weren't allowed to go to
the toilet, and there was no container in there. Many people did
that, and the closets stank very badly.
At night, you lie in the cells like animals. The mattresses and
blankets are filthy, and they stink. There is no sun or air. The
cell is full of water, because it leaks and there is rain. The
blankets were soaked, the mattresses too. There was no toilet.
There was a container to go in, but it was very difficult to go in
there.
All the time, I was wearing the same clothes that they first gave
me when I came to the prison. They were very thin clothes, and it
was very cold when standing in shabeh, or in the closet. The closet
was especially cold.
In the interrogation room, the interrogators slapped me and kicked
me between the legs while I was sitting on the chair, My prison
number was 2048, so once an interrogator tried to make me squat
2,048 times. This is impossible, of course, so after a while I fell
on the ground. Then he kicked me in the legs and testicles,
When in interrogation you feel destroyed psychologically. For
example, when they give you the same cup to drink from and to wash
your behind with after defecating. It's disgusting. This is the
atmosphere there all the time.
Testimonies such as those of Bassem Tamimi indicate that the peace
process, by itself, has done little to eradicate a pattern of
torture and ill-treatment. The places where they were interrogated,
Ramallah prison and al-Far'a military detention center, continue to
induct scores of Palestinians for interrogation each month. Even if
the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and Jericho
area proceeds as planned, Israeli security forces will continue to
exercise direct rule over the majority of Palestinians who live
outside these areas; and throughout the Occupied Territories,
Israel will retain responsibility "for overall security of Israelis
for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public
order," according to the Declaration of Principles, In this
context, systematically abusive interrogations are likely to
continue unless strong pressure is brought to bear to end
them.
Endnotes
1 Palestinian women have also been subjected to routine abuse while
under interrogation. However, the number of women interrogated
during the Intifada is only a tiny fraction of the total number of
interrogated. HRW did not have the resources to include a
reasonably sized sample of women detainees in this study of
interrogation methods. Teresa Thornhill, in her Making Women Talk:
The Interrogation of Palestinian Women Security Detainees by the
Israeli General Security Services (London: Lawyers for Palestinian
Human Rights, 1992), argued persuasively that women detainees are
routinely subjected to sleep deprivation, hooding, confinement in
closet-like cells, slaps, kicks, hygiene deprivation, and sexual
and other threats.
2 The number of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians incarcerated by the
Israeli authorities has fluctuated over the last three years
between roughly 10,000 and 15,000 Palestinians, At the beginning of
1994, the figure was closer to the lower figure, which would give a
per capita rate of roughly 550 per 100,000 inhabitants. This rate
surpasses those of the two countries with the highest per capita
rates, among the countries for which data is available: the United
States, with slightly over 500 per 100,000, and South Africa, with
393 per 100,000. [Human Rights Watch, Prison Conditions in South
Africa (New York: Human Rights Watch, February 1994). p. ix.] In
contrast to the prisoner population in these two countries, most
incarcerated Palestinians are held for security-related offenses or
accusations, rather than for common criminal offenses.
3 Letter to HRW from Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Fogel, head,
Information Branch, IOF Spokesman's Unit, February 24, 1994. The
letter stated that in 1993,15,676 Palestinians were tried in
military courts, of whom 320 were acquitted.
4 IDF spokeswoman Captain Avital Margalit, in a July 10, 1993
telephone interview.
5 B'Tselem, The Interrogation of Palestinians during the Intifada:
Follow up to March 1991 B'Tselcm Report (Jerusalem: B'Tselem, March
1992), p. 10. These methods included severe beatings on all parts
of the body with fists, sticks and other instruments; verbal
insults and abuse; threats to harm the detainee or his family
members; sleep and food deprivation; hooding; painful confinement
for long periods in deliberately painful positions; the use of
collaborators to extract information either by violence or threats
of violence; forced physical exercise; and cold showers and
enforced sitting on a wet floor for prolonged periods. (p.7)
6 The lDF responded to a February 13, 1994 request from HRW for
data on IDF interrogations by advising us to contact the Ministry
of Justice. Our query to that ministry, submitted on March 20,
1994, has not been answered.
7 For the sake of brevity, we use "position abuse" or "abusive body
positioning" to denote the forcing of detainees to maintain painful
and usually unnatural body positions for prolonged periods. It may
involve requiring them to stand erect without moving for hours on
end, or shackling them to tiny chairs and/or to pipes or rings
embedded in walls at awkward heights; or confining them in spaces
so cramped they can barely move their limbs. These positions grow
increasingly painful with time.
8 We wish to emphasize that the position of the State of Israel has
been and remains, that the IGSS] authorization procedure does not
conflict with the 1984 Convention against Torture or with other
prohibitions in international law." (Response by Shai Nitzan,
Senior Deputy to the State Attorney, dated November 16, 1993, to
B'Tselem, The New Procedures ill GSS Interrogation.
9 PLO chief Yasser Arafat condemned the killing as a renegade
action carried out "without the knowledge of the leadership."
(Clyde Haberman, "Arafat Condemns Settler's Slaying," Tile New York
Times, November 14, 1993).
10 Israel Radio in Hebrew, November 12, 1993, as reported in
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, November 15, 1993.
