02-26-2005, 05:04 AM
Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups are alarmed by the horrifying experience of more than 140 Palestinian children who have been detained and tortured by Israeli security bodies since the beginning of the Intifada.
Fourteen-year-old Palestinian girl Sanaa' Amer saw the many faces of injustice when she was detained, tortured and sentenced to 12 month's imprisonment for a crime she did not commit.
Amer, along with her sister Abir, were accused of carrying a knife with the intent to stab an Israeli settler at the West Bank town of Hebron. However, as Amer recalls the events of her arrest: "I was standing away from my sister at the end of the street. Suddenly she went towards a settler and the soldiers arrested her. I was talking to a journalist about what happened and a soldier came and grabbed my arm and took me to a military jeep. He hit me on my cheek with a strong blow, so strong that my ear hurt for a week." And this was just the beginning of Amer's suffering.
An international, Geneva-based human rights group, Defence For Children International/Palestine section (DCI/PS), expressed grave concern about Amer's case in a statement issued last week. DCI/PS said the sentence passed against her on 12 July by an Israeli military court was "shocking as it did not take into account her age or the fact that she did not carry out any violent act whatsoever."
The group noted the sharp contrast between the sentence meted out to Amer and that passed on 37-year-old Nahum Korman, an Israeli settler, who received six months of community service last year for the brutal slaying of 11-year-old Palestinian boy Hilmi Shawasheh in 1996. Korman was originally acquitted by an Israeli court, but prosecutors sought a retrial because the sentence was "mild."
DCI/PS also expressed grave concern over Amer's detention conditions following her arrest on 20 February 2001. According to the statement, Amer was detained in Ramle prison, where she has been subjected to severe human rights abuses including beating and harassment by prison staff. Amer was detained along with nine other female Palestinian political detainees, seven adults and two children, who suffered the same maltreatment.
During a riot by prisoners in early June to protest the inhumane detention conditions, Amer was beaten with sticks on her arms and legs. Her arms were tied behind her back and she was kicked by Israeli soldiers in her stomach, inducing her to cough up blood. As of 12 July, Amer had received no medical treatment and suffered pain whenever she ate or drank.
Amer's case, although shocking, is only one of many cases which have brought to light the plight of Palestinian minors in Israeli jails, and Israeli violations of international law concerning the treatment of juvenile Palestinian detainees.
According to Palestinian sources, more than 140 Palestinian minors have been detained and tortured in Israeli prisons on suspicion of throwing stones since the Intifada began.
An Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, issued a statement on 15 July exposing the systematic torture and abuse of Palestinian minors detained at the police station in Gush Etzion, near the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The report stated that these practices were commonly carried out there by police officers.
In most cases, police arrested Palestinian children in their homes in the middle of the night and took them to the police station in Gush Etzion, where police interrogators tortured them until the morning to obtain confessions and information about other minors.
Methods of torture described in the report included forcing the juvenile detainees to stand in painful positions for prolonged periods; beating them severely for hours at a time with various objects; splashing cold water on the detainees in the facility's courtyard in wintry conditions; pushing their heads into the toilet bowl and flushing the toilet; making death threats and cursing and degrading them.
The report also included first-hand testimonies of 10 boys, aged 14 to 17, who have experienced these horrors.
More than one policeman was involved in the torture of 14-year-old minor Mohamed Sabatin. As Sabatin recalls, "A strong, dark-skinned man of average height ... beat me with great force, kicked me for about five minutes, and put me in a room where four policemen were seated. Two of the policemen bound my hands and feet, blindfolded me, and took me into a room which I couldn't see. The four of them took turns beating me for about four hours. They struck me with a mop stick, kicked me all over my body, and swore at me in filthy language."
The fortune of 15-year-old Sultan Mahdi was no better. His hands and feet were tied to a chair. When Mahdi denied throwing stones at army vehicles on the main road, he was taken to the bathroom near the interrogation room. "One of the interrogators grabbed me by the hair and put my head in the toilet. I was frightened. When they took me back to the interrogation room, I decided to confess. I told them that I threw five stones at a settler's vehicle. They wrote up a detailed testimony and forced me to sign it," he said.
Another victim, 17-year-old Isma'il Sabatin, was left hanging in the air with his legs up and his head down. "They removed the chair from under me and left me hanging in the air, with my handcuffed hands holding onto the pipe and the weight of my body hanging in the air, drawing my hands downwards," he said.
Sixteen-year-old Ibrahim Za'ul was ready to make a false confession to save a friend from torture. "They brought me to a room," he said. "Inside was an officer who identified himself as 'Ayub'. He said he was a merciless person and was ready to kill me if I didn't tell him the name of the youths who threw stones. Another guy opened the door and said in Arabic that Ahmed A'ref Sabatin had died during interrogation. The officer turned to me and said, 'What are we going to do with the body of Ahmed? Do you want to change places with Ahmed?' I was blindfolded. The interrogator said he was going to electrocute me and that I would die like Ahmed. I felt the sensation of two iron wires being stuck on me, but nothing happened. I was taken to the room where Ahmed Sabatin was. The interrogators began to beat him right in front of me. Ahmed began to cry and scream at the top of his voice. I asked them to stop because Ahmed did not throw stones, and I told them that I was ready to confess that I threw stones."