[Ppnews] New Report on Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners During Operation Cast Lead

[Political Prisoner News]

PCATI and Adalah: "Exposed: The Treatment of Palestinian Detainees 
During Operation Cast Lead"

author

  Monday July 12, 2010 10:09
author
 by Adalah
http://www.imemc.org/article/59111

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Adalah: The Legal 
Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, released, today, a special 
report "Exposed" which discusses violations of detainee rights during 
"Cast Lead".

The report relies on a significant number of testimonies given to 
PCATI and Adalah attorneys, most of the civilian detainees who were 
arrested by the Israeli army and interrogated in Israel.

The testimonies provide give rise to a series claim that the Israeli 
Army systematically and deliberately violated their basic rights 
while disregarding domestic and international law.
Among its primary findings:

1. The State of Israel failed in it its international & domestic 
legal obligation to provide information regarding place of detention 
to detainee family members without delay to families of the detainees 
and to organizations dealing with detainees. Not only were detainee 
families harmed by this dereliction also the ability to monitor 
detention conditions and the application of detainee rights was harmed.

2. The detainees were held in wretched conditions. They were held in 
ditches and in cold and dark cells while be denied minimally 
appropriate nutrition and sanitary needs. This treatment forms the 
basis for the torture and ill treatment that many of the detainees 
experienced at various stages of their detention. These conditions 
allowed the army to break the spirit and to humiliate the detainees 
in addition to the violence that they suffered during interrogation.

3. The testimonies revealed that the army systematically used the Gaz 
residets as human shields in order to protect the soldiers while 
engaged in military activity, within the strip and for many days and 
even up to 10 days in some instances. At times the civilians were 
forced to go into homes ahead of the soldiers, to march next to the 
soldiers to shield them from gun fire.

4. Israel established a legal category for detainees, "unlawful 
combatant" which is unrecognized in international law. This special 
status allowed Israel to deprive the detainees of prisoner of war 
status and the conditions and rights that go with it while, at the 
same time, denying them the status and rights of protected civilians.

The report's conclusion, a number of recommendations connected to 
detainee rights, are made in order to prevent such a travesty of 
rights violations in the future. Among the recommendations is a call 
for the establishment of a governmental investigative committee that 
abides by international standards in order to investigate the 
violations of "Cast Lead" and to put on trial those suspected of 
committing of fences.

In addition the report recommends the establishment of standards for 
treatment of detainees, and to establish an efficient monitoring 
mechanism and to cancel the unlawful combatants law.

The Report (English)
<http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/Exposed-Treatment%20of%20Detainees%20Cast%20Lead_June%202010.pdf>http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/Exposed-Treatment%2...0.pdf




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