Israel has ‘de facto state policy’ of organised torture, says UN report | Israel
According to the new UN report covering the last two years, Israel has a “de facto state policy based on organized and widespread torture”. This report also raises concerns about the impunity of Israeli security forces for war crimes.
The UN Committee on Torture “expressed deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions.” [and] sexual violence”.
ReportThe report, published on Friday as part of the committee’s regular monitoring of countries that have signed the UN convention against torture, said Palestinian detainees were humiliated by being “forced to behave like animals or urinated on”, systematically deprived of medical care and subjected to extreme restraints “resulting in amputation in some cases”.
The UN committee of 10 independent experts expressed concern over the wholesale use of Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Act to justify the long-term detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. The latest figures announced by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem He said that as of the end of September, the Israel Prison Service held 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” that is, without trial.
In the new UN report, which covers the two-year period since October 7, 2023, when the Gaza war began, it is pointed out that the age of criminal responsibility imposed by Israel is 12 and that children under the age of 12 are also detained, and that “the rate of children who are currently detained without charge or detained is high.”
The new report says children classified as security prisoners “have severe restrictions on communication with their families, may be held in solitary confinement, and are unable to access education in breach of international standards.” He calls on Israel to change its legislation so that solitary confinement is not used against children.
The UN committee, established to monitor the implementation of the 1984 UN convention against torture, goes further, arguing that the policies imposed by Israel on a daily basis in occupied Palestine, taken as a whole, “may amount to torture”.
The report stated that 75 Palestinians died in custody during the Gaza war, during which Palestinian detention conditions “deteriorated markedly”. The report said the death toll was “abnormally high and appears to have affected only the Palestinian prisoner population.” It states that “to date, no government official has been held responsible or accountable for such deaths.”
The Israeli government has repeatedly denied the use of torture. The UN committee heard testimony from representatives of the country’s foreign ministry, justice ministry and prison service, who argued that prison conditions were adequate and subject to inspection.
However, the committee noted that the investigator tasked with investigating complaints about interrogations had not initiated “any criminal investigations into acts of torture and ill-treatment” in the past two years, despite widespread allegations of such practices.
The report noted that Israel cited only one conviction for torture or ill-treatment in this two-year period; This was an apparent reference to an Israeli soldier convicted of repeatedly attacking blindfolded and bound detainees in Gaza with his fists, baton and assault rifle in February this year. In this case, the committee found that the seven-month sentence “does not reflect the seriousness of the offence”.
The report was released on a day when three Israeli border police officers were released after being questioned about the shooting deaths of two Palestinians detained in Jenin.
In the video of the incident on Thursday evening, two men named Youssef Asasa and Mahmoud Abdallah were seen crawling out of a building. Asasa and Abdullah are seen raising their hands and shirts to show that they are unarmed.
The men, who both claimed to be fighters in the Jerusalem Brigades of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were detained for a few seconds by border police officers; They included a bald-headed, bearded police officer who appears in the video kicking both detainees, apparently pushing them back inside the building before making the gesture. A few seconds later, Asasa and Abdullah were shot by officers from a distance of about 2 metres.
Three border officers questioned about the incident on Friday claimed they “felt an immediate and concrete threat” to their lives, according to Israeli media. The two detainees refused to strip naked and “put their hands in their pockets,” and then one of the men tried to “run back into the building,” the report of what happened said.
In the crime scene video, the authenticity of which is not disputed by Israeli authorities, the two men do not show any resistance or are seen with their hands in their pockets. They appear reluctant to re-enter the building under the express instructions of the border police officer.
The three border police officers were released after questioning on the condition that they not discuss the incident with others.
