When Asadullah Haroon, a former Guantánamo detainee, seems at pictures of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, reminiscences of his personal abuse and torture in US detention facilities come to thoughts.
“That is the worst type of oppression,” he says. “Once they name you a terrorist you can not defend your self in any means. It’s undoubtedly the identical course of; They’re torturing individuals the identical means. “I believe the Individuals have completed it and the Israelis are implementing it.”
Haroon, who received his case in opposition to the US authorities for illegal imprisonment in 2021, was held with out cost in Cuba’s infamous Guantanamo Bay jail for 16 years after his arrest in 2007. Definitely, he says, the Palestinians Now held in Israeli prisons they’re enduring therapy just like what he skilled.
“It is like the primary days after they arrested me, they beat me to the purpose of standing; I could not sit down or if I used to be sitting down and banged up, I could not stand up. The identical with the insomnia and I used to be attacked for a number of days. Many prisoners have been bitten by canine. We obtain little or no medical consideration.
“The bodily torture was actually unhealthy, however the worst factor was the psychological torture in numerous types. “I believe there may be not a lot distinction within the torture of prisoners in Palestine, Guantánamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib.”
Attacked by canine and disadvantaged of water
Some 54 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since Israel launched its lethal conflict on Gaza in October final 12 months, based on the Gaza Detainee and Former Detainee Affairs Fee. The United Nations Human Rights Workplace in Palestine says it has been receiving a number of reviews of mass detentions, prisoner abuse and compelled disappearances of Palestinians for months, whereas Palestinians who’ve been freed have offered harrowing testimonies to help companies or revealed on social networks. of the arrest.
In late April, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed particulars of abuse suffered by Palestinian prisoners who had been imprisoned with out trial.
His report included descriptions of periodic beatings, prisoners being attacked by canine, pressured to kiss the Israeli flag, pressured to curse the Prophet Muhammad, disadvantaged of water (even for a bathroom in a cell shared by 10 inmates), electrical energy being reduce off, receiving inadequate meals and being stripped bare.
One prisoner’s account says: “A guard began placing carrots up the anus of AH and different prisoners.”
A lot of the abuse perpetrated in Israeli prisons has been filmed by the troopers who carry it out. It has sturdy echoes of the therapy of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners in US detention facilities, such because the infamous Abu Ghraib jail, the place US troopers have been photographed alongside prisoners in humiliating positions in 2003.
The Public Committee In opposition to Torture in Israel (PCATI) and different human rights organizations have known as on the United Nations particular rapporteur on torture to take pressing measures to finish “systematic abuse, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners.” and Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.” amenities”.
That presentation by Adalah, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and PCATI describes a “brutal escalation,” characterised by what seems to be systemic violence, torture and ill-treatment in opposition to Palestinians in Israeli custody in seven totally different prisons and detention facilities because the starting. . of the conflict in October.
Legal professionals and activists say Israeli therapy of Palestinian prisoners has all of the hallmarks of “American-style” abuse and torture.
“Sadly, during the last 20 years, the US has given the world a really unhealthy instance of how prisoners ought to be handled,” says human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, one of many first attorneys to be granted entry to detainees in Guantánamo Bay. for greater than 20 years and has represented shoppers, together with Haroon, who finally obtained their freedom from jail.
“Whether or not ISIS (ISIL) copies the orange uniforms, or different international locations, together with Israel based on the UN, utilizing abusive interrogation strategies, this all goes again to the sordid instance of Guantanamo Bay and the opposite secret prisons in the US ”. says Stafford Smith. “It’s time for the US to confess our horrible errors and demand as soon as once more that each the US and the remainder of the world behave in a civilized method.”
Held freed from cost
Of the 9,500 political prisoners, greater than 3,500 Palestinians are being held with out cost in Israeli prisons. Whereas 1000’s of individuals have been already in jail earlier than the conflict in Gaza started in October final 12 months, many extra have been arrested or arrested once more since then.
Folks detained with out cost may be held indefinitely by the Israeli army for renewable intervals, primarily based on “secret proof” that neither the detainees nor their attorneys can see. Activists and human rights attorneys contemplate these individuals hostages with out authorized recourse.
Others who’ve skilled comparable detention, torture and abuse by the hands of US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan agree with them.
Moazzam Begg is a human rights defender who was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for 3 years with out cost. He additionally attracts parallels with what Israelis name administrative detention, below which Palestinians may be detained and denied their authorized rights.
“There may be an apparent parallel between Gaza and Guantanamo and the conflict on terrorism,” Begg says. “What’s seen within the therapy, from stripping the prisoners bare to the mistreatment of them, to the abuse of spiritual and racial attributes. There may be completely a parallel. It is plain”.
Begg says what occurred to him 20 years in the past, first at Bagram Jail in Afghanistan after which at Guantánamo, continues to be occurring. “I’ve returned to Afghanistan a number of instances. I returned to the Bagram Detention Middle, the place I used to be stripped bare and overwhelmed. They tied me to different prisoners. I noticed the abuse of different prisoners. I noticed the homicide of different prisoners by the hands of American troopers.
“And people American troopers continued doing what they did from right here, virtually like a replica of a textbook at Abu Ghraib. [the notorious prison in Iraq where US soldiers abused detainees in 2003 and 2004], what they did to us in Guantánamo. Once more, the dispossession, the merciless, inhuman and degrading therapy.”
Human rights teams are demanding an pressing worldwide investigation to carry accountable these answerable for torture and abuse in opposition to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, which has documented the testimonies of former Palestinian prisoners, mentioned: “The knowledge collected results in the conclusion that the Israeli army routinely and extensively commits crimes of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, intentional murder, torture and inhuman therapy. therapy, sexual violence and denial of a good trial.
“Detainees have been additionally denied entry to meals and medical care, together with vital and life-saving care, spit upon and urinated on, and subjected to different merciless and degrading acts and psychological abuse, together with threats of rape and dying, insults and different types of sexual violence.
Nonetheless, regardless of these requires justice from human rights teams and attorneys, Begg says he’s not optimistic that issues will change within the close to future. “There isn’t any hope. I see no hope in relation to worldwide regulation, in relation to United Nations resolutions: lots of them have been violated.
“And the identical goes for Israel committing genocide, ethnic cleaning and attacking kids at a time after we affirm that human rights regulation and worldwide regulation are common.”
