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eadlines/010715/world/afp/Rights_group_accuses_Israeli_police_of_torturing_Pal estinian_youngsters.html Sunday, July 15 8:46 PM SGT Rights group accuses Israeli police of torturing Palestinian youngsters JERUSALEM, July 15 (AFP) - Palestinian teenager Sultan Mahdi's hands and feet were tied to a chair leg by Israeli interrogators who later shoved his head down a toilet, according to a report published by an Israeli human rights group Sunday. Mahdi, 15, is one of 10 boys whose case has been examined by the B'Tselem rights group which said they were abused and tortured at a police station in the Gush Etzion Jewish settlement bloc south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. "In most of the cases, the police arrested them at their homes in the middle of the night and took them to the police station in Gush Etzion, where police interrogators tortured them until morning," B'Tselem said in a statement. It said police, who arrested the 10 youngsters aged between 14 and 17 between the start of the Palestinian intifada or uprising in late September and January this year, were seeking to extract confessions and information about other minors. "These are not isolated cases or uncommon conduct by certain police officers, and information received by B'Tselem raises the serious likelihood that torture during interrogations at the Gush Etzion police station continues," it said. It said methods of torture included forcing the minors to stand in painful positions for prolonged periods, beating them severely for hours, sometimes with objects, pushing their heads into toilet bowls and flushing and making death threats. Mahdi said he was beaten about the face and head during his five-hour interrogation and decided to confess to throwing five stones at a settler's vehicle after his head was put in the toilet. Another boy, Ismail Sabatin, 17, said he was ordered to lean against a wall with his legs up and head down and later told to stand on a chair and grab a pipe fixed to the wall. "They removed the chair from under me and left me hanging in the air with my handcuffed hands holding on to the pipe and the weight of my body, hanging in the air, drawing my hands downwards," he said. Ibrahim Zaul 16, told B'Tselem one officer threatened to kill him, and said another boy had died under interrogation. "I was blindfolded. The interrogator said that he was going to electrocute me and that I would die like Ahmed. I felt the sensation of two iron wires being stuck on me but nothing happened," he said. |
