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Human Rights Watch Report Details PA’s ‘Arrest and Torture’ of Dissenters

[additional-authors]
October 25, 2018
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during Fatah Central Committee meeting in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank October 6, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) details how the Palestinian Authority (PA) is conducting political “arrests and torture” of civilians who criticized the PA.

The report states that HRW interviewed 147 people, which included former PA prisoners, family members, lawyers and NGOs, leading HRW to conclude that the PA might have committed “a crime against humanity” through what appears to be arbitrary arrest and torture of civilians.

In one case, a Palestinian identified as “Zaid,” was detained by the PA while residing in the Balata Refugee camp, an area that engages in “resistance” activity against PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Zaid said PA officials accused him of murder, and when he said he was not involved, PA officers tortured him:

Officers then handcuffed his hands behind his back, covered his face, and put him in “the Closet,” a room he described as roughly 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters in size where he said he had difficulty breathing. He said they kept him there for 22 hours a day for 22 consecutive days. Later, they had him stand on a wooden box and tied his handcuffed hands to a rope, which they gradually raised to stretch his arms. He said they kept him like this for 20 hours, before letting him sleep. They then returned him to shabeh [positional torture]. In subsequent interrogations, officers threatened to return him to shabeh if he did not speak.

At one point during his first three days of detention, Zaid said officers in the corridor put wires on the back of his shoulders and twice shocked him for about 25 to 30 seconds, and once tied a cord around his penis for eight or nine hours, causing his penis to swell and turn blue. On his third day, while handcuffed and blindfolded, he said a guard pushed him to the ground and, for 10 minutes, repeatedly hit and kicked him, fracturing his knee and causing him to lose consciousness. He woke 20 minutes later to find himself with a doctor.

Zaid was eventually acquitted and released.

Social media posts critical of the PA can be enough for them to detain a Palestinian, as Hamza Zbeidat discovered when he was detained and PA officials blatantly told him it was a “political arrest”:

He said the security officers then called him a liar, asking, “What did the PA ever do to you? You do not pay electricity?” Zbeidat denied that he was a liar and an officer slapped him, knocking off his glasses. Another officer then read one of Zbeidat’s Facebook posts from two months earlier in which he had written, “We will struggle against the PA like we struggle against the occupation.” They asked him, “Why are you attacking [the PA] and swearing at the president?” Zbeidat defended his right to speak and to criticize authorities, which prompted the officer to threaten to imprison him. Officers also asked him about his political affiliation, what he shares on Facebook, and why he criticizes the PA and not Hamas.

The PA was also found to have targeted journalists. Muhammed al-Haj, an independent photojournalist, told HRW that he resides in Jordan because he is “constantly harassed” by the PA after he published a government memo detailing security cooperation with the Israelis, a document that contradicted public statements issued by Abbas.

“The PA exists to look after me, not to intimidate me,” al-Haj said.

One student, Alaa Zaqeq, was detained and beaten by PA officers for his alleged involvement a Hamas campus affiliate. He was subjected to one interrogator known as “the Juicer”:

The Juicer pulled him up by his shirt and punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. He then began asking Zaqeq about his activities with the Islamic Bloc, the student group affiliated with Hamas, at the university. When he failed to answer satisfactorily, the Juicer subjected him to shabeh [positional torture]. The Juicer told him he would “leave this place on a wheelchair” and “wearing a skirt and a headscarf.”

This pattern of interrogations and abuse continued over the course of 24 days in Jericho. Zaqeq said the shabeh he experienced included forcing him to stand with his legs spread out and hands up or in a half squat, all of which left his body trembling.53 To elicit a confession, officers in one instance told him that a member of his family had fallen ill; in another, they threatened to arrest his mother, sister, and wife. These threats led Zaqeq to confess to financing the Islamic Bloc at the university, even though he told Human Rights Watch that this was untrue.

Zaqeq said he told officials that he had asthma, a muscle rupture in his chest, and nerveinflammation. According to Zaqeq, they replied, “We do not care” and “Even if you die, no one will care.” He saw a doctor at one point when he could not move his thumb and legs and felt pain in his shoulders. The doctor gave him painkillers, telling him he could not take him to the hospital. Sleeping for two weeks without a mattress in the cell exacerbated Zaqeq’s pain.

Zaqeq has since been detained multiple times by the Israelis; the report did not state why.

HRW wrote a letter to the PA criticizing their actions, stating that PA “security forces routinely mistreat and torture those in its custody, taunting, beating, whipping, and forcing detainees into painful stress positions for hours at a time,” and that those detainees were only arrested for “peaceful” criticism of the PA and were not subjected to due process.

“The pattern of arbitrary arrests and torture that we have been documenting appears to be systematic and to have been in place for many years,” HRW Middle East and Africa Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson wrote to the PA. “Moreover, Palestinian authorities have largely failed to hold security forces accountable for these abuses.”

The PA denied any wrongdoing in their response to HRW.

Read the full report here.

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