Israel has “a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture”, according to a UN report covering the past two years, which also raised concerns about the impunity of Israeli security forces for war crimes.
The UN committee on torture expressed “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence”.
The report, published on Friday as part of the committee’s regular monitoring of countries that have signed the UN convention against torture, also said Palestinian detainees were humiliated by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on”, were systematically denied medical care and subject to excessive use of restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation”.
The UN committee of 10 independent experts raised concern about the wholesale use of Israel’s unlawful combatants law to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. The latest figures published by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said that as of the end of September the Israel Prison Service was holding 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention”, meaning without trial.
The new UN report, covering a two-year period since the beginning of the Gaza war on 7 October 2023, draws attention to the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand”, noting the age of criminal responsibility imposed by Israel is 12, and that children younger than 12 have also been detained.
Children categorised as security prisoners, the report says, “have severe restrictions on family contact, may be held in solitary confinement, and do not have access to education, in violation of international standards”. It appeals to Israel to amend its legislation so that solitary confinement is not used against children.
The UN committee, which was established to monitor implementation of the 1984 UN convention against torture, goes further, arguing that the daily imposition of Israeli policies in occupied Palestine, taken as a whole, “may amount to torture”.
The report said 75 Palestinians had died in custody over the course of the Gaza war, during which detention conditions for Palestinians had undergone a “marked deterioration”. It found the death toll to be “abnormally high and appears to have exclusively affected the Palestinian detainee population”. It notes that “to date, no state officials have been held responsible or accountable for such deaths”.
Israel’s government has repeatedly denied the use of torture. The UN committee heard evidence from representatives of the country’s foreign ministry, justice ministry and prison service who argued that prison conditions were adequate and subject to supervision.
However, the committee pointed out that the inspector charged with investigating complaints on interrogations had brought “no criminal prosecutions for acts of torture and ill-treatment” over the past two years, despite widespread allegations of such practices.
It said that Israel had pointed to just one conviction for torture or ill-treatment in that two-year period, an apparent reference to an Israeli soldier sentenced in February this year for repeatedly attacking bound and blindfolded detainees from Gaza with his fists, a baton and his assault rifle. In that case, the committee found that the seven-month sentence “appears not to reflect the severity of the offence”.
The report was published on a day when three Israeli border police officers were released after questioning over the fatal shooting of two Palestinians who had been detained in Jenin.
Video of the incident on Thursday evening showed the two men, Youssef Asasa and Mahmoud Abdallah, crawling out of a building. Asasa and Abdallah can be seen holding their hands up and lifting their shirts to show they are unarmed.
The men, both claimed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad as fighters in its al-Quds Brigades, were detained for a few seconds by border police officers, including a bald-headed officer with a beard who appears in the video to take charge and kick both detainees before making a gesture, seemingly ushering them back inside the building. Seconds later Asasa and Abdallah were shot by the officers at a range of about 2 metres.
According to Israeli media, the three border officers questioned on Friday about the incident claimed they “felt an immediate and tangible threat” to their lives. In their reported account of what happened the two detainees had refused to strip naked and had “put their hands in their pockets”, and then one of the men tried to “escape back into the building”.
The video from the scene, the authenticity of which has not been disputed by the Israeli authorities, does not show any obvious resistance from the two men, nor does it show them with their hands in their pockets. They appear to be reluctant to re-enter the building under the apparent orders from the border police officer.
The three border police officers were released after questioning on condition they did not discuss the case with others.
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