Torture: A State's Tyranny  

Torture During the First Six Months of 1998 in Palestinian National Authority Detention Centers and Prisons  

Part One:

Documentation and research

Since its establishment in 1996, the PHRMG followed most violations committed by Israel and the PNA. It collected a great deal of information and documents that point out the human rights violations committed by both sides against the Palestinian citizen. The PHRMG released many objective and neutral reports that highlight these violations and their negative effect on the Palestinian individual and the Palestinian society. This is another report of the sort, and it concentrates on Palestinian detainees tortured by the various security forces.

There are hundreds of Palestinians held in PNA jails and interrogation centers. Neither our organization, nor any other human rights organizations were provided with precise information on the number of detainees in Palestinian jails. This is done deliberately on the part of the executive forces to cover up the magnitude of violations committed against Palestinian detainees.    

Information derived from human rights organizations state that there are almost 400 criminal prisoners, 130 others charged with collaboration, and about 60 political prisoners in Palestinian jails in Gaza alone. According to the same source, there is an equal number of Palestinian prisoners held in West Bank prisons.

We have discovered that there are dozens of Palestinian prisoners who were exposed to severe torture, which in many instances led to death. The number of Palestinian prisoners who died in jails until today is 20. (Notice the pamphlet released by the PHRMG on 10 August 1998).

The PHRMG was able to meet many of the victims of torture. The number of persons who were ready to give their testimonies on what they went through during the interrogation was 68. These are from different areas in the West Bank.

The following table illustrates the geographical distribution of victims who gave their testimonies:

Table 1

From Table 1, we notice that there were not any cases from the Gaza Strip and some other cities in the West Bank, such as Qalqiliah and Tulkarm. This does not mean that there were not any victims in them. On the contrary, many cases of victims were reported, but we were unable to work on their cases because of the risk of doing fieldwork in Gaza, because of difficulties in working there. This is because of the Israeli border (Erez) formed by Israel from one side, and because citizens are afraid to give their testimonies, on the other. These reasons, among others, prevented us from documenting cases from these areas in our report. In the past however, the PHRMG managed to obtain some testimonies from the Gaza Strip, and put them in the reports that were released in the past two years.

We believe that many victims do not give us their testimonies because they are worried of being harassed and followed, especially when they give out information to human rights organizations or the press. For example, citizen X from Ramallah said the following in his testimony:

“…at 11 in the evening the next day, they asked me to sign on a 1,000 Jordanian Dinars promissory, so as not to ever set interviews with the media regarding the arrest of my family and myself. They threatened to detain me for a long time if I did not sign.. I obeyed and signed.”

During the first six months of 1998, PHRMG researchers managed to obtain 68 testimonies under oath. Fifty-three of these testimonies were written by the victims themselves after they were released, and 15 of them were written by families of the victims who saw the sign of torture on their sons when they visited them in jails. We were unable to visit these victims.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that there is no distinction between race, age, sex, belief, geographical, familial, or political belonging. It seems that the policy that the PNA is following while torturing Palestinian prisoners does not follow that of the Universal Declaration. Torture did not occur in certain geographical area, and among a certain age group, sex or sect. Rather, it included people from all areas, from different sects and clans, such as women, children and old people. The PHRMG was unable to meet victims from women and children, because they are careful about what they say, and because of the sensitive position they are in. this we noticed while doing our fieldwork. The PHRMG also noticed that young men between the ages 20 to 40, are the ones mainly exposed to danger.

This is illustrated in the following table:

Table 2

Background on Arrests and the Charges Pressed Against Detainees:

The documentation we have showed that we have a big number of Palestinian prisoners who had been arrested during a series of arbitrary arrests conducted by the security forces at certain times in different places. Dozens of citizens are taken away without having any connection with the reasons behind the series of arrests. For example, in 16% of the cases, people were arrested in the aftermath of the murder of Mohyi Eldin al-Sharif in Ramallah on 29 March. 24% of the other cases were arrested during a series of arrests conducted on individuals from Hebron, who supposedly forged tax invoices.

Detainees, whose cases were documented in this report according to the charges pressed against them, can be divided to different groups. Some of them were arrested on a political background, such as forming political and provoking activities against the PNA. Others are charged of belonging to political opposition movements such as “Hamas” of the “Islamic Jihad.” These form 19% of these cases.

Those who were arrested for security reasons such as accused of collaboration with the Israeli authorities, or fraud, or selling land to Israelis, form 28% of the cases. Other arrests due to security reasons such as owning a weapon, or planning and participating in military operations against Israel (terrorist acts), form 9% of the cases.

Furthermore, 23.5% of the individuals were arrested with the excuse of tax evasion. These are categorized under civil or criminal cases. Those charged of taking drugs or stealing form 10.5% of the cases. The rest of the cases, which form 10%, were arrested because of personal reasons, revenge, or without any charges.

It is important to mention that these percentages show that torture is not applied on a certain group of people, but it includes all detainees charged differently. International agreements made a positive distinction between the group arrested, such as political prisoners, prisoners of consciousness, in terms of treatment, detention conditions, and arrests. This situation contradicts and opposes what the security forces are actually doing in their prisons.

The Security Forces Responsible for Arresting and Torturing Victims:

In 1995, al-Haq (a human rights organization in Ramallah) released a report under the title “Continuous Violations,” on the occasion of redeployment and the PNA taking over in Gaza and Jericho. The report documented nine Palestinian security forces involved in arresting and torturing detainees, because the PNA did not make clear what the duties of each security force are. At the time, the justification was that the PNA was new and inexperienced. In another report released by the PHRMG in June last year, only six security forces were practicing torture.

It seems that five years later since redeployment, the situation is slowly changing. The number of security forces involved in torturing victims has decreased to only four security forces: the Preventive Security Service (PSS) form 47%, the General Intelligence (GI) form 43%, the Military Intelligence (MI) form 1%, and the police and criminal department form 9%. This is illustrated in the following table:

Table 3

Although the arrests and torture occur under the hands of these security forces, this does not mean that there are no violations committed by other security forces, or that the percentages are an accurate proportion of torture cases. We have information that point the involvement of other security forces such as the National Security, Force 17, and others. However, we were unable to obtain testimonies from victims in the time period which the report covers. Furthermore, the decrease in the number of security forces involved in torturing and arresting victims does not mean that the duties and rights of each security force are clear. Some detainees stated that they were arrested more than once on the same charges after being released, and arrested again and tortured for no reason.

Citizen A.M.A. was arrested again by the GI 24 hours after the PSS released him. He was interrogated on the same charge, exposed to torture by both forces, then he received an apology from them upon his release.

“..they did not believe my story, and continued torturing me so that I would confess on something I did not do. Then one of the interrogators came, took off my cuffs and took me to a GI room and apologized to me. He asked me not to tell about what happened with me, and that it was all a mistake. He said that they made sure that my story was true, and he released me.”