http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2001/israel11202001.html
Israel / Occupied Territories
Israel Fails to Address Increasing Use of Torture
AI Index: MDE 15/103/2001 Publish date: 20/11/2001
GENEVA -- The Israeli government has failed to address the evidence of
increasing use of torture by its law enforcement officials, Amnesty
International said today as the United Nations Committee Against
Torture prepares to examine the country's third periodic report.
Amnesty International's briefing to the Committee stated that, since
the September 1999 High Court of Justice judgement which banned
interrogation methods constituting torture, there has been strong
evidence that these methods - including sleep deprivation often seated
in painful positions; prolonged squatting on haunches; painful
handcuffing - are now being used again.
"We regret that notwithstanding the High Court of Justice's 1999
ruling and the Committee Against Torture's clear statement in 1997
that these methods constitute torture, the State of Israel, in its
report to the Committee, continues to deny this," says Amnesty
International.
"This failure to acknowledge that these methods of interrogation are
illegal under Article 1 of the Convention has been an important factor
in encouraging their revival, particularly over the past year," says
the organization's briefing to the Committee.
In addition detainees have frequently been held in prolonged
incommunicado detention for more than 20 days without being given
access to lawyers or families; the UN Special Rapporteur on torture
stated in 2001 that Israel's use of prolonged incommunicado detention
was "itself a practice constituting cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment".
In its briefing to the Committee Against Torture Amnesty International
raises incidents of torture, prolonged incommunicado detention and
brutality against Palestinians by members of the security forces and
expresses concern that security force members appear to benefit from
impunity for torture or ill-treatment of Palestinians.
The organization stresses that the practice of administrative
detention without charge or trial, indefinitely renewable, which the
Committee Against Torture raised in 1998 as an apparent breach of the
prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, still
continues.
Amnesty International also called on the Committee Against Torture to
declare that the demolition of Palestinian homes constitutes cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 16 of the Convention
Against Torture. The European Court of Human Rights has deemed Turkish
demolition of houses to constitute inhuman treatment in breach of
Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
"More than 500 homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories
during the past year, making a minimum of 2,000 Palestinians homeless,
the vast majority of them children," the organization said. "There can
be no excuse for inflicting hundreds of human tragedies".
Amnesty International also considers that other forms of collective
punishment carried out by the Israeli authorities, including the
prolonged closures of towns, villages and whole areas, denying freedom
of movement to Palestinians, and prolonged curfews might also fall
under Article 16 of the Convention.
