5 May 2009
Haaretz

United Nations human rights experts questioned Israeli officials on Tuesday about hundreds of allegations of torture of Palestinian detainees by security forces, which they said had not been investigated in recent
years.

 

The United Nations Committee against Torture, composed of 10 independent experts, also challenged an Israeli delegation about the alleged existence of a secret detention and interrogation facility known as “Facility 1391″.

 

Israel defended its record at the session, which continues on Wednesday afternoon, but did not address the issue of a secret center. Israel is among seven countries in the dock at a three-week session being held through May 15.

 

“Every complaint alleging inappropriate treatment towards prisoners and detainees is investigated and seriously considered by the competent authorities, and if there is legal basis, criminal or disciplinary procedures are taken,” said Shai Nitzan, deputy state attorney for special affairs at Israel’s justice ministry.

 

Four cases examined by an independent inspector had resulted in disciplinary measures, and several had resulted in “general remarks to ISA (Israel Security Agency) interrogators”, he said.

 

Fernando Marino Menendez, a committee member from Spain, noted that the Convention against Torture, ratified by Israel, specifically stipulates that there is no justification for carrying out acts of torture, even in times of war or emergency.

 

He also voiced concern that there was still no crime of torture defined in domestic Israeli law that reflected all the provisions set out in the pact which entered into force in 1987.

 

Some 600 complaints of alleged ill-treatment or torture were brought between 2001 and 2006, but none had been followed up, he said, citing information from activists and media.

 

Felice Gaer, an American expert on the committee, asked why interrogations by the Israel Security Agency were not recorded either on audiotapes or on video. She suggested that a reason complaints were decreasing was that there had not been a single criminal investigation into any such cases.

 

Other committee members raised the alleged existence of the secret detention and interrogation facility and cited a ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court which had upheld that no investigations could be conducted against activities there.

 

The committee, which last scrutinized Israel’s record in November 2001, cited “numerous allegations” at the time that Israeli police and security officials tortured or mistreated Palestinian detainees, and urged it to prevent abuses.

 

Separately, a team of UN rights investigators looking into Israel’s invasion of Gaza in late December, led by former UN war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, is meeting all week in Geneva ahead of a planned trip to the region, officials said.

 

According to a Palestinian rights group, 1,417 Palestinians, including 926 civilians, were killed in the fighting in the Hamas-run coastal strip. Israel disputes those figures.

 

“The Gaza Strip is controlled by a murderous terrorist organization which acts unceasingly to strike at the State of Israel and its inhabitants, violating every possible rule of international law in its violent acts, which are directed indiscriminately towards civilians,” Nitzan said on Tuesday.

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said that a damning UN report on Israel’s conduct in its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was not legally binding.

 

Ban made the comments in a letter he agreed to attach to the report at the request of Foreign Ministry director-general Yossi Gal, who traveled to New York on Monday for meetings with Ban’s aides on the matter.

 

Ban also commended the Israel Defense Forces for its close coordination with the world body during the 3-week operation, as well as the cooperation given by Israel with the report’s authors.

 

He said his representatives were holding meetings with the Israeli government on implementing the report’s recommendations. The UN chief added there would be no further reports by the world body on the subject.

 

In its official response, the Foreign Ministry said: “Both [in] spirit and language, the report is tendentious, patently biased, and ignores the facts presented to the committee.”

 

“The committee has preferred the claims of Hamas, a murderous terror organization, and by doing so has misled the world.”