From: odin@netlink.cts.com (Hank Roth)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Israel: Arbitrary Detention, Torture of Palestinians Continues
Date: 21 Nov 92 06:52:48 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: NetLink Online Communications, San Diego CA
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From People's Weekly World, November 14, 1992}
ISRAELI OPPRESSION OF PALESTINIANS CONTINUES
               by Hans Lebrecht
 
TEL AVIV--The Israeli public was shocked to see, on the state-
owned TV net Nov. 6, a Palestinian father of four who, after his 
release from a six-week long interrogation by the SHABAK, the 
"General Security Service," was physically and psychologically 
broken, hardly able to walk, bent over and supported by his 
brother. Relatives said that before his arrest, the man was 
healthy and went to work every day. Now he cannot speak, 
remembers nothing and does not even recognize his wife and 
children. His condition was apparently caused by inhuman 
interrogation methods.
 
Since the beginning of the year, at least five cases of 
Palestinians have died during or right after SHABAK 
interrogations. The cause of death is generally given by the 
authorities as "heart failure," "internal bleeding from ulcer" or 
"self-inflicted death."
 
A special report on "administrative detention," just released by 
B'tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the 
Occupied Territories, states that since the beginning of the 
Intifada uprising nearly five years ago, at least 15,000 
Palestinians have been incarcerated under so-called 
"administrative detention" orders. These detainees are held 
without indictment or court procedures for six months to one 
year, renewable arbitrarily, sometimes for many years.
 
Currently there are about 1,400 to 1,800 Palestinians under 
"administrative detention." The overall number of current 
Intifada prisoners is reckoned to be between 8,600 (offical 
Israeli reports) and 12,000 (Palestinian sources).
 
The report stresses that under international law and the Fourth 
Geneva Convention of 1949, a person may be held in administration 
detention only when a real threat to security of the state, or to 
an occupation army exists--and not longer than two weeks.
 
"Conditions of internment for these detainess...are paradoxically 
much worse than those of prisoners, convicted for most heinous 
criminal acts, serving sentence in Israeli Prison facilites," the 
report says.
 
B'tselem urges reexamination of all cases of administrative 
detainees, as well as the policy of administering the 
administrative detention. The Center also recommends greatly 
limiting the authority by which a person may be deprived of his 
freedom, without being informed of the charge against him, or 
told how he can appeal his custody.
 
Regrettably, it must be said that the fate of the Palestinian 
population has not changed since the change of government in 
July, despite the pre-election promises of Rabin and his Labor 
colleagues as well as the leaders of the Left-Zionist bloc, 
Meretz, supposedly part of the Israeli peace camp. 
 
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