| Date of birth: 20 May 1990
Place of residence: Jerusalem
Date of arrest: 27 January 2008
Charge: Stone throwing and damage of property
Place of detention: Al-Qashla police station
and al-Maskobieh police station
Early in 2008 a Palestinian teenager was arrested
under suspicion of stone-throwing. When he would
not confess to the crime, both his parents were
arrested in an attempt to coerce an admission of
guilt out of him. He was arrested and detained a
second time two weeks later, during which he
was beaten and tortured. DCI/PS strongly condemns
the Israeli authorities’ treatment of Gheith,
amounting to physical and psychological torture,
and further denounces his arrest and detention
as arbitrary and illegal.
When his ordeal began, Gheith* , 17, was asleep in
his family home in the Old City of Jerusalem. At
around midnight on 27 January 2008, the house
was suddenly surrounded by the Israeli army,
border police and intelligence personnel. They
knocked repeatedly on the door, and when Gheith's
father answered, one of them identified himself as
'Ariel', the head of the ISA (Israeli Security Agency,
formerly known as the GSS) in Jerusalem. He told
Gheith's father he wanted to speak with him and his
son, so Gheith's father asked him into their home.
He went to wake his son and brought him into their
living room where Ariel was waiting with three other
plain clothed ISA officers. As they sat down Ariel
began questioning Gheith about an incident that had
occurred the day before in which a police station was
vandalized and security cameras broken from stones
thrown at them. Gheith told him he had nothing to
do with it. The questioning lasted 40-45 minutes, at
which point Ariel told Gheith's father that he wanted
to continue the interrogation at al-Qashla police
station. They arrested Gheith, handcuffed him, put
him in a civilian car and took him to the police station.
When he arrived at al-Qashla police station he was
put in a room with two intelligence officers in civilian
clothes, and stayed there for about 30 minutes. He
was then transferred to another room, where an
interrogator was waiting for him, whom the others
called 'Imad'. Imad questioned him about the incident
at the police station the day before and about what
he had done that day in general, and again Gheith
denied any involvement. The interrogation lasted for
three hours, until 4:00am. He then signed a statement
written in Hebrew, confirming what he had said to
them, and was transferred to al-Maskobieh, a
different police station, to sleep.
The next morning, a man claiming to be an interrogator
from al-Qashla came to Gheith's family home and said
he wanted both of Gheith’s parents to come in for
interrogation. Gheith's father told him that his wife was
ill and could not come, but that he would go by himself.
He then left for al-Qashla. Half an hour later, a group of
border police and other men in plain clothes showed up
at Gheith's house. They put the children into one room
and began searching the entire house. Gheith's mother
then called her husband, who was still on his way to
al-Qashla, to let him know what was happening. He
immediately returned home, where he found the border
police recklessly searching every room in the house.
Gheith's father asked one of them what they were doing
and was told that they had an order to search the house
and bring him and his wife in for questioning. They were
then placed in a civilian car and brought to al-Qashla.
When they arrived they were placed in different rooms.
An interrogator came into the room where they were
keeping Gheith's father and tried to convince him to speak
to his son and get him to confess. Gheith's father said that
he would speak to his son but that he would tell him to say
exactly what happened, and nothing more. When they
brought him in to see his son, Gheith told him that he
knew nothing about what they were interrogating him
about. He stayed with him for 20 minutes and was
taken out into the hallway. After he left, the
interrogator told him that his father was going to be
imprisoned.
Gheith's mother, in the meantime, had been waiting in
a room by herself. Soon a man entered and began yelling
at her, asking questions about what her son was wearing
when he was arrested. She told him she did not
remember, and that on the evening of the alleged offence
her son was at a party for one of the prisoners. They
then tied her hands and told her that she would be
kept under arrest until the following day.
A few hours after having gone to sleep, Gheith was
woken up in his cell at al-Maskobieh and taken to the
Alsoloh (the lower court), where the judge extended his
detention for 24 hours. He was then taken back to
al-Qashla and placed in an interrogation room with two
new interrogators. One of them began pushing him, and
then tried to bite his shoulder, but he was able to get out
of the way, at which point they started insulting him.
His aggressor then left the room and the remaining
interrogator turned to him and told him not to upset
the man in the uniform, because if he did so he would
get hurt. The interrogator then told him that he would
arrest his parents and that Gheith would be forced to
watch as they were imprisoned. Gheith then said he
knew the interrogator was just trying to scare him.
“We will see,” he responded.
The officers holding Gheith's mother had by this point
tied her hands in preparation to present her to her son.
When they brought her into the room where they were
holding Gheith one of them announced “Look at your
mother, I told you I would imprison her.” The officer
then threw Gheith's mother's identity card at him and
removed her from the room, without having let a word
pass between mother and son. The officers then untied
her hands and brought her into another room where a
man she hadn't seen before came in and started telling
her about the many things her son had supposedly done.
He told her they wanted her to talk to Gheith and
convince him to tell the truth. She said that she didn't
know anything, but that she would go and see her son.
When she was led back to see Gheith, he was speaking
calmly to another man, who told her that they could
switch his case from a military to a civil one and have him
released immediately. He then said to Gheith: “This is your
mother, talk to her,” and left the room. She then began to
ask Gheith about how he was doing, but another officer
came in, and Gheith told her to take her ID and go home.
She was given back her ID card and brought out into the
hallway. Her husband was waiting there and they left
together.
After his parents left, Gheith was brought into a room
with a concrete bed, and after two hours of sleep he
was taken to another interrogation room where he was
accused of being a member of Hizbullah because of a
flag they had found while searching his house. He
denied any involvement with the group. The
questioning continued for an hour, after which he was
brought back to the room with the bed, where he slept
for another two hours. They then woke him up and
continued to press him about his political beliefs “Why do
you have Fateh flags, and green [Hamas] flags?” one of
the interrogators asked. He responded that he had acquired
them at weddings and concerts. They then let him go back
to sleep.
At midnight he was taken back to court where the
prosecutor requested that he be released on the
condition that he not be allowed to enter the Old City,
his place of residence, for 60 days. The judge refused
and ordered that he be released without conditions.
Two hours later he was released from al-Qashla.
His ordeal, however, was far from over. Two weeks later
the army again stormed his house in the middle of the night.
When they found him they put a black sack over his head
and tied his hands behind his back. They then put a jacket
around his neck and used it to lead him from his house
towards their vehicles. Along the way he was kicked in
the stomach, and when he fell to the ground they continued
kicking him. He was then placed on the floor of a car, and
during the ride that ensued his body was stomped on by
the men who arrested him. When they arrived at their
destination, the now familiar al-Qashla police station, he
was put in a room where he was beaten all over his body
by several people. When they removed the bag from his
head he saw a man dressed in civilian clothing whom the
others referred to as Kobi. Gheith recognised the name,
as this man had a reputation among ex-detainees for being
particularly abusive. Again they accused him of breaking
the security cameras, and Kobi punched him in the face and
hit his feet. He grabbed the skin on his chest and twisted it
violently, causing him great pain. He was then moved out
into the hallway where each person who walked by took
turns beating him. He was moved back to al-Maskobieh
where he was detained for the night, and the next morning
was taken back to court, where he was released on a bail
of NIS 1500 and sentenced to three days house arrest.
During his house arrest he was constantly watched by the
police and his house was raided multiple times to ensure
that he had not left. After his house arrest, his father took him
to the hospital for treatment as he still had bruises all over his legs.
Even though Gheith is no longer in detention, the experience
casts a pall over his hopes for the future. He remains free
on bail but his trial date has been set for 18 June 2008,
a date that is never far from his mind. Gheith is in his
last year of secondary school, and like all Palestinian
children in his situation, he knows he has to study
throughout the course of the entire year to succeed in
his final Tawjihi exams. Needless to say, thoughts of
his impending trial have distracted him from his studies,
resulting in diminished academic performance. He
now questions the sense in taking the exams at all, as
he fears that even if he does write and pass them,
which is not certain given the disruptions the trial
could cause and the threat of incarceration thereafter,
he will not be allowed to leave the West Bank to continue
his studies because of his previous arrests. His legal
problems have also adversely affected his social life.
Whereas he formerly spent his free time engaged in
Dabka (traditional Arab folk dancing), and at coffee
houses with friends, Gheith now rarely goes out
and spends much of his time alone.
The actions perpetrated against Gheith during his
arrest, interrogation and detention violate the rights
afforded to him under international law. Article 37
of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (UNCRC) clearly states that children may not
be subjected to “torture or other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment. Furthermore,
Article 2(2) of the United Nations Convention against
Torture (UNCAT) states that “No exceptional
circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or
a threat of war, internal political in stability or any
other public emergency, may be invoked as a
justification of torture.” Article 4(1,2) of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
contains the same provision, establishing freedom from
torture as a non-derogable right, even in time of
“public emergency which threatens the life of the nation”.
Therefore, the absolute prohibition against torture has
become a principle of customary international law as
jus cogens; i.e., a prohibition of a higher nature,
overriding all others.
|
International definition of torture
Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether
physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a
person for such purposes as obtaining from him
or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has
committed or is suspected of having committed,
or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or
for any reason based on discrimination of any kind,
when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the
instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence
of a public official or other person acting in an
official capacity. (UNCAT, Article 1)
| | Despite this, the treatment Gheith received at the hands
of his captors squarely fits the international definition of
torture, in both a physical sense, from the beatings he
received, and psychologically, from the threats the
police made and carried out against his family. The
arrest of family members brings extreme psychological
pressure and a terrible burden of guilt onto prisoners,
who tend to sign confessions in order to protect their
loved ones.
Psychological torture has been widely condemned by
rights groups around the world, and the Public
Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI) recently
released a report detailing several cases over the past
year of the use of the arrest of family members, or the
threat thereof, to elicit confessions from suspects.
Upon being questioned by the Knesset's Constitution,
Law and Justice Committee about these allegations, the
head of the ISA's interrogation department admitted to
using these methods of interrogation, but only in one
instance. On this occasion, a detainee attempted suicide
several times after his wife and father were arrested
and shown to him dressed in prison clothes. According
to representatives of the ISA, this case prompted a
decision to put an end to arresting innocent family
members to extract confessions from suspected
criminals, but the fact that PCATI presented
documented evidence of six such cases over the past
year casts doubt over the ISA's claims that the
implementation practices were limited to one occasion.
Not only do these arrests and threats amount to
psychological torture for the suspect, but they are
a violation of the rights of their family members –
innocents subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.
DCI/PS condemns this practice in the strongest
possible terms, and calls on the international
community and States Parties to the UN Convention
against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child to denounce and voice their opposition to
the use of torture by the Israeli authorities.
*Full name of the victim withheld to ensure privacy
and safety of the victim. |
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