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Torture macht frei

Digery Cohen | 06.05.2007 15:49

Israel has become a torture state.

Torture macht frei1
Torture macht frei1


A report released Sunday by two human rights organizations charges that the Shin Bet security service is employing torture because of two ruling by the Israeli High Court- one allowing torture and another banning it.
Typical.

The joint report by B'Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, was based on testimony of prisoners arrested between July 2005 and March 2006.

According to the report, the torture includes beating, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation.
The report states that the methods are used to break the prisoners under questioning, violate High Court rulings governing the conduct of interrogations.

The authors of the report severely criticize the State Prosecutor's Office and the courts for allegedly allowing these practices to be used.

A 1999 the Israeli High Court ruling declared an absolute ban on the use of torture during interrogation.

But the court then allowed torture as part of the questioning, if it did not have the aim of breaking the spirit of those under interrogation.

Oh well. That’s all right then.

According to the report, Shin Bet interrogators are supported by other authorities in Israel . "Shin Bet and soldiers do not operate in a vacuum, they are part of a system. The situation described in this document could not have come about without the support of other bodies responsible for implementing the law in Israel."

Harsh criticism was also directed at the High Court in the report, which it said gives the seal of approval to decrees which make it possible to prevent detainees access to legal representation. Hundreds of petitions have been made on this subject, and none of them has been followed up, it said.

Digery Cohen
- e-mail: digerycohen@yahoo.co.uk

Comments

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Nazi Propaganda

07.05.2007 13:54

@ Mods:
Would you please delete this Nazi propaganda. This article is not a critique of Israeli occupation or a statement for human rights, it it the worst kind of antisemitism and Nazi propaganda we have seen in a long time.
We think it is a shame for europe’s left that antifascists have to write a statement about an ‘article’ like this to get it deleted, but obviously it is neccesary. Before you might start to moarn about censorship, we give you the reason for our demand (even if we think that this should not be neccesary). This ‘article’ relativates the crime comitted in the german concentration camps. The slogan Digery Cohen uses is taken from a sign of the entrance to the biggest concentration camp in germany during WWII, Ausschwitz (originally it is ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (Work frees you)). Ausschwitz was a complex of different camps, from work camps, experimental laboratory to the death camp Ausschwitz-Birkenau where hundreds of thousands of Jews, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, handicaped people, Socalists, Anarchists, Communists, critics of the regime etc were tortured, starved, humiliated and finally killed. Now some anti-imperialists probably start to cry: “but the British invented concentration camps, Israel has them in the moment, etc”. But this is wrong. These camps are not comparable to the whole industy of destruction germany had. There are no dentists to take out the gold teeth, there is no industry based on the hair of the killed people and Israel has not a ramp where doctors decide who is able to work and who is going to be killed right away.
It is unbearable that a critical left forum is tolerating the ongoing comparison of the holocaust and the current politics of the state Israel. It is not our intention to put tortue into perspective but we are criticising this comparison with the holocaust. So please delete this article.
This is Nazi propaganda and clearly breaks with the principles of Indymedia - and not censorship.

Best whishes, antifascists from East-Midland

Antifascists from East Midland