https://arab.news/9ndx4
Reading excerpts of the latest report by a UN committee of experts on torture focusing on Israeli practices against Palestinian detainees is nauseating, disturbing and shocking, to say the least. It documents egregious violations of the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture, which Israel has signed, and concludes that Tel Aviv has “a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture.” The report covers the last two years, since Oct. 7, 2023, and cites disturbing examples of what Palestinian detainees are subjected to in Israeli detention facilities.
The committee expressed “deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions (and) sexual violence.” It added that Palestinian detainees were humiliated by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on.” They were also systematically denied medical care and subjected to excessive use of restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation.”
It raised concern about what it described as the wholesale use of the so-called Unlawful Combatants Law to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, as of September, the Israel Prison Service was holding 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention” without trial. The committee pointed 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 that have also been detained.
