BETHELEHEM,
December 26, 2015 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Saturday summoned two Palestinians from
the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, to appear before the Israeli
intelligence for interrogation.
Security
sources informed WAFA that forces handed Samer Thawabteh, 28, and Ali Taqatqa,
23, notices ordering them to appear for interrogation at the Gush Etzion settlement
bloc.
According
to a report issued by B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights
in the Occupied Territories, “Since November 2009, B’Tselem has received
testimonies from dozens of Palestinian residents of the Bethlehem and Hebron
districts, most of them minors, alleging that they were subjected to threats
and violence, sometimes amounting to torture, during their interrogation at the
police station at Gush Etzion.”
It
said that, “The testimonies describe interrogations in which the minors were
forced to confess to alleged offenses, mostly stone-throwing. In almost all
cases, the interrogators stopped using violence against the interrogatees once
they confessed.”
“The
right of every person not to be subjected to ill-treatment or torture (whether
physical or mental) is one of the few human rights that are considered
absolute,” stressed the center.
The center further affirmed that “a confession
obtained through violation of this right can certainly not serve as the basis
for a conviction.”
According
to the center, “The violence included slaps, punches and kicks to all parts of
the body, and blows with objects, such as a gun or a stick.”
From
2009 to 2013, B'Tselem sent 31 complaints to the Department for Investigation
of Police (DIP) on behalf of Palestinians who reported they had been subjected
to violence and threats by interrogators at the Etzion station.
In
the rest of the cases that B'Tselem documented, the person being interrogated
or their families chose not to file a complaint with the DIP, for fear that
this would result in harm to members of the family who had already been
interrogated or to other relatives, or because of a general lack of trust in
the Israeli justice system.
“The
high number of reports B'Tselem has received regarding violent interrogations
at the Etzion station, and the fact that they span several years, gives rise to
heavy suspicion that this is not a case of a single interrogator who chose to
use illegal interrogation methods, but rather an entire apparatus that backs
him up and allows such conduct to take place,” Said the center.
T.R.
