[Fresh Ink] How many secret prisons does Israel have?

[Richard Menec]

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21493

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Israel Secret Prisons: How many secret prisons does Israel have?

UN torture watchdog demands access

May 19, 2009 By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth -- The United Nation's watchdog on torture has criticised Israel
for refusing to allow inspections at a secret prison, dubbed by critics as
"Israel's Guantanamo Bay", and demanded to know if more such clandestine
detention camps are operating.

In a report published on Friday, the Committee Against Torture requested
that Israel identify the location of the camp, officially referred to as
"Facility 1391", and allow access to the International Committee of the Red
Cross.

Findings from Israeli human rights groups show that the prison has in the
past been used to hold Arab and Muslim prisoners, including Palestinians,
and that routine torture and physical abuse were carried out by
interrogators.

The UN committee's panel of 10 independent experts also found credible the
submissions from Israeli groups that Palestinian detainees are
systematically tortured despite the banning of such practices by the Israeli
Supreme Court in 1999.

The existence of Facility 1391 came to light in 2002, when Palestinians were
detained there for the first time during Israel's reinvasion of the West
Bank.

In a submission to the UN committee, Israel denied that any prisoners are
currently being held at the site, although it admits that several Lebanese
were detained there during the attack on Lebanon in 2006.

The committee expressed concern about an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in
2005 that found it "reasonable" for the state not to investigate suspicions
of torture at the prison. The panel is believed to be concerned that without
inspections the prison might still be in use or could be revived at short
notice.

The Israeli court, the committee wrote, "should ensure that all allegations
of torture and ill-treatment by detainees in Facility 1391 be impartially
investigated [and] the results made public".

Hamoked, an Israeli human rights organisation, first identified the prison
after two Palestinian cousins seized in Nablus in 2002 could not be traced
by their families. Israeli officials eventually admitted that the pair were
being held at a secret site.

Israel still refuses to identify the precise location of the prison, which
is inside Israel and about 100km north of Jerusalem. A few buildings are
visible, but most of the prison is built underground.

"We only learnt about the prison because the army made the mistake of
putting Palestinians there when they ran out of room in Israel's main
prisons," said Dalia Kerstein, the director of Hamoked.

"The real purpose of the camp is to interrogate prisoners from the Arab and
Muslim world, who would be difficult to trace because their families are
unlikely to contact Israeli organisations for help."

Ms Kerstein said the prison site was an even grosser violation of
international law than Guantanamo Bay because it had never been inspected
and no one knew what took place there.

According to the testimonies of the Palestinian cousins, Mohammed and Bashar
Jadallah, they were held in isolation cells measuring two metres square,
with black walls, no windows and a light bulb on 24 hours a day. On the rare
occasions they were escorted outside, they had to wear blacked-out goggles.

When Bashar Jadallah, 50, asked where he was, he was told he was "on the
moon".

According to the testimony of Mohammed Jadallah, 23, he was repeatedly
beaten, his shackles tightened, he was tied in painful positions to a chair,
he was not allowed to go to the toilet and he was prevented from sleeping,
with water thrown on him if he nodded off. Interrogators are also reported
to have shown him pictures of family members and threatened to harm them.

Although Palestinians passing through the prison were interrogated by the
domestic secret police, the Shin Bet, foreign nationals at the prison fall
under the responsibility of a special wing of military intelligence known as
Unit 504, whose interrogation methods are believed to be much harsher.

Shortly after the prison came to light, a former inmate - Mustafa Dirani, a
leader of the Lebanese Shia group Amal - launched a court case in Israel
claiming he had been raped by a guard.

Mr Dirani, seized from Lebanon in 1994, was held in Facility 1391 for eight
years along with a Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid. Israel hoped
to extract information from the pair in its search for a missing airman, Ron
Arad, downed over Lebanon in 1986.

Mr Dirani alleged in court that he had been physically abused by a senior
army interrogator known as "Major George", including an incident when he was
sodomised with a baton.

The case was dropped in early 2004 when Mr Dirani was released in a prisoner
exchange.

Ms Kerstein said there was no proof that more prisons existed in Israel like
Facility 1391, but some of the testimonies collected from former inmates
suggested that they had been held at different secret locations.

She said the concern was that Israel might have been one of the countries
that received "extraordinary rendition" flights, in which prisoners captured
by the United States were smuggled to other countries for torture.

"If a democracy allows one of these prisons, who is to say that there are
not more?" she said.

The committee examined other suspicions of torture involving Israel. It
expressed particular concern about Israel's failure to investigate more than
600 complaints made by detainees against the Shin Bet since the panel's last
hearings, in 2001.

It also highlighted the pressure put on Gazans who needed to enter Israel
for medical treatment to turn informer.

Ishai Menuchin, executive director of Israel's Public Committee against
Torture, said his group had sent several submissions to the committee
showing that torture was systematically used against detainees.

"After the court decision in 1999, interrogators simply learnt to be more
creative in their techniques," he said.

He added that, since Israel's redefinition of Gaza as an "enemy state", some
Palestinians seized there were being held as "illegal combatants" rather
than "security detainees".

"In those circumstances, they might qualify for incarceration in secret
prisons like Facility 1391."

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National
(www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.