JERUSALEM: Israel has conducted a systematic policy of prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the war in Gaza, subjecting Palestinian detainees to acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse, a report from Israeli rights group B’Tselem said on Monday.
The group said the report was based on interviews with 55 Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, who were detained in Israeli prisons since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the war, most of them without being tried.
“The testimonies clearly indicate a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,” the report said.
The report was issued days after the Israeli military detained nine soldiers accused of severe abuse of a prisoner in a military facility in the Negev desert. According to Israeli press reports, the soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a member of an elite Hamas unit.
A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service said that all prisoners were treated according to the law and all basic rights were fully applied by professionally trained guards.
“We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility,” the spokesperson said, adding that detainees had the right to file complaints that would be fully examined and investigated.
B’Tselem detailed allegations that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to arbitrary beatings, degrading and humiliating treatment and sleep deprivation, as well as “the repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity.”
“The overall picture indicates abuse and torture carried out under orders, in utter defiance of Israel’s obligations both under domestic law and international law,” the report said.
Allegations of prisoner abuse have surfaced repeatedly during the war in Gaza, adding to mounting international pressure on Israel over its conduct of the 10 month-old war.
The report from B’Tselem, a group that documents human rights violations by Israel in the occupied West Bank and other areas, said the treatment accorded to prisoners was a deliberate policy implemented under the direction of the hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The prison service spokesperson said that since the Oct. 7 attack, Ben-Gvir had ordered that prison conditions be made more strict to reverse an improvement in conditions allowed previously.
Qadura Fares, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Detainees Affairs, reiterated a call for an international commission of inquiry into the treatment of prisoners to hold Israel accountable.
“We have documentation of the crimes committed by Israel against Palestinian detainees in its prisons and we have horrific testimonies of what detainees are subjected to, whether related to torture, rape and other crimes,” he said.
Israeli rights group says Palestinian prisoners subject to systematic abuse
https://arab.news/7j8xz
Israeli rights group says Palestinian prisoners subject to systematic abuse
- Israel subjected Palestinian detainees to arbitrary violence and sexual abuse, says rights group
- Report based on interviews with 55 Palestinians prisoners from Gaza, West Bank and Israel
US condemns Houthi detention of embassy staff in Yemen. Guterres seeks release of all detained UN staff
- US State Department says the sham proceedings only prove that the Houthis rely on the use of terror against their own people to stay in power
- UN Secretary General says the continued Houthi detention and prosecution of UN personnel is a violation of international law
WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS: The US on Wednesday condemned the ongoing detention of current and former local staffers of the US embassy in Yemen by the Houthi movement.
“The United States condemns the Houthis’ ongoing unlawful detention of current and former local staff of the US Mission to Yemen,” US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
“The Houthis’ arrests of those staff, and the sham proceedings that have been brought against them, are further evidence that the Houthis rely on the use of terror against their own people as a way to stay in power,” Pigott said.
Earlier, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Houthi rebels not to prosecute detained UN personnel and to work “in good faith” to immediately release all detained staff from the UN and foreign agencies and missions.
Guterres condemned the referrals of the UN personnel to the Houthis’ special criminal court and called the detentions of UN staff a violation of international law, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
There are currently 59 UN personnel, all Yemeni nationals, detained by the Iranian-backed Houthis, in addition to dozens from nongovernmental organizations, civil society and diplomatic missions, he said.
He said a number of them have been referred to the criminal court in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. “There were procedures going on in the court, I believe, today and all of this is very, very worrying to us,” Dujarric said.
The court in late November convicted 17 people of spying for foreign governments, part of a yearslong Houthi crackdown on Yemeni staffers working for foreign organizations.
The court said the 17 people were part of “espionage cells within a spy network affiliated with the American, Israeli and Saudi intelligence,” according to the Houthi-run SABA news agency. They were sentenced to death by firing squad in public, but a lawyer for some of them said the sentence can be appealed.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday that one of those referred to the court was from his office. He said the colleague, who has been detained since November 2021, was presented to the “so-called” court “on fabricated charges of espionage connected to his work.”
“This is totally unacceptable and a grave human rights violence,” Türk said.
He said detainees have been held in “intolerable conditions” and his office has received “very concerning reports of mistreatment of numerous staff.” Dujarric said some have been held incommunicado for years.
Dujarric said the UN is in constant contact with the Houthis, and the secretary-general and others have also raised the issue of the detainees with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman and others.
The Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and since then they have been engaged in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is supported by a Saudi-led military coalition.
The November verdict was the latest in the Houthi crackdown in areas of Yemen under their control. They have imprisoned thousands of people during the civil war.
