Questions are being raised about the involvement of Israeli
doctors in the suspected torture of a young Palestinian
detainee who died in custody last month.
Sharmila Devi
reports.
The death of a Palestinian prisoner in
disputed
circumstances in an Israeli prison has reignited a
longstanding controversy over alleged physician complicity
in torture as well as sparking renewed Palestinian anger
over the estimated 4600 prisoners held by Israel.
The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) denied that medical
professionals were involved in torture or abuse and said
that as far as it knew, torture was not approved or used by
Israeli security forces or prisons. However, human-rights
campaigners say Palestinian prisoners have long suffered
from beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged and painful
handcuffing, humiliation, and medical neglect—considered
torture under international standards.
Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old petrol attendant with two
children, was arrested on Feb 18 on suspicion of throwing
stones and Molotov cocktails during a West Bank
demonstration held last November against Israeli military
action in the Gaza strip. Palestinians say his arrest, months
after the demonstration, and his interrogation was part of a
longstanding Israeli policy to coerce prisoners to become
informants after their release.
Palestinian leaders say some 800 000 Palestinians have
been detained by Israeli forces since 1967, and Jaradat was
the 203rd prisoner to die. He died after several days of
interrogation by Israeli's Shin Bet internal security service
on Feb 23 at Israel's Megiddo prison. An autopsy was held
the next day at Israel's Institute of Forensic Medicine in the
presence of Saber Aloul, the Palestinian Authority's chief
pathologist, who said bruising on the body was evidence of
torture.
Israel's health ministry said on Feb 28, after examining new
findings from the autopsy that there was no evidence
Jaradat was physically abused or poisoned, nor was it
possible to determine his cause of death.
Israeli officials had originally attributed his death to a heart
attack and said bruising and broken ribs were
“characteristic findings of a resuscitation, which the
medical crew from the Israel Prison Service and Magen
David Adom engaged in for 50 minutes in an effort to save
his life”.
Additional samples taken from the body were still
undergoing microscopic and toxicology tests and results
were not expected for several weeks. “The signs that
appeared during the autopsy show clearly that he was
subjected to severe torture that led immediately to his
death”, Issa Qaraka, the Palestinian Minister of Prisoner
Affairs said at a Ramallah press conference after being
briefed by the Palestinian pathologist who attended the
autopsy.
Kamil Sabbagh, Jaradat's lawyer, told an Israeli military
judge a couple of days before his client's death that he was
being forced to sit for long periods during interrogation, had
complained of back pain, and seemed terrified of returning
to the Shin Bet detention centre where he was being held.
The judge ordered an examination by a prison doctor.
Jaradat died at Megiddo prison and it was not known when
he was moved there.
Derek Summerfield, an honorary senior lecturer at the
University of London's Institute of Psychiatry and
campaigner against what he called Israeli physicians’
violations of human rights, says he wanted to know what
part doctors played in the circumstances of Jaradat's death.
“By Israel's own admission, Jaradat was seen by Israeli
doctors 2 days earlier and they found him in good health.
The key medical ethical question is what were these
doctors examining him for, if not to assess whether he
could withstand torture”, he tells The Lancet. “This is
precisely what the campaign regarding medical collusion
with torture in Israel was launched for in 2009 and it
continues to run.”
The IMA said in a statement: “The IMA vociferously objects
to the claim that medical professionals are involved in
torture or abuse, and we will continue to do everything
possible with the tools available to us to inform doctors
about their obligation to report and to conduct themselves
appropriately.”
The IMA and human rights organisations have called for
responsibility for prisoners’ health to be taken away from
the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and given to an outside body,
such as health maintenance organisations (HMO) or the
health ministry, which a year ago set up a standing
committee to which doctors can report suspicions of
torture. “It's true that every doctor has a conflict of
interest between the patient and the system in the HMOs
and also in the army”, Avinoam Reches, who heads the
IMA's Ethics Board, told Ha'aretz newspaper. “But in the
case of the IPS, the problem is severe because the
treatment is given to people who have no freedom of choice
whatsoever.”
Palestinians and human-rights groups demanded an
independent investigation into Jaradat's death.
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