The interrogation of palestinians during the intifada



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(b) International

The publication of the Report received immediate publicity in the international media - proportionately more in Europe than in the United States. The Reuters report (22 March, 1991) was widely quoted and correspondents' stories appeared in the major British newspapers.(17) The authors of the Report were interviewed on C.N.N., B.B.C and various European radio networks.

There was little international follow-up after the initial publication of the Report. In June 1991, an article appeared in The Nation by Aryeh Neier, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.(18) He described the B'tselem report as "...among the most convincing human rights reports that I can recall reading," and repeated our criticism of the Landau Commission and of the interrogation practises of the GSS Wide publicity to the type of allegations contained in the B'tselem Report was given by the appearance in English in the New York Review of Books of Arie Shavit's article [see Appendix I ] about Gaza Detention Center.(19)

Various international human rights organizations - notably Amnesty International and Middle East Watch - used our findings in their own reports about torture and interrogation methods in the Occupied Territories [see Sect. 5 (b)].




3. OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS


In reponse to the publicity and demands raised by the B'tselem Report, a number of official investigations were set up at various parliamentary, government and military levels. Although B'tselem welcomed these reponses, it should be noted that not one of them corresponded to our demand for an independent body to investigate the allegations contained in our Report.



(a) Knesset and Knesset Committees

With the release of B'Tselem's report, members of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, MK's Yair Tsaban and Yossi Sarid, demanded that the Subcommittee on Secret Services convene for a special session on the report's findings. They said, inter alia, that "the GSS is positioned on a difficult front in the battle against terrorist organizations, but the investigating committee headed by Judge Moshe Landau has already established that this does not allow it a free hand in interrogation of suspects, and that it would be appropriate to limit the interrogation methods, and actively prevent acts of ill-treatment and torture."20


Approximately six weeks after B'Tselem's report was released, 16 Knesset Members from the Labor Alignment, Citizens Rights Movement, Mapam, and Shinui parties, wrote to the Prime Minister, demanding a denial or confirmation of our findings. The Knesset Members stated that since the release of the B'Tselem report, no response has been received from the relevant authorities regarding the findings. MK Mordechai Warshuvski asked that the subject be raised for discussion in the Knesset Law and Constitution Committee.21
On June 5, Knesset Members Hagai Merom, Rueven Rivlin, and Dedi Zucker, brought the B'Tselem report to the Knesset plenum. MK Merom emphasized the accountability of the GSS for GSS interrogations that involve torture. He talked about B'Tselem's importance in preventing people from taking refuge in conformity and not speaking out against injustice. MK Rivlin, on the other hand, emphasized that the report gave the GSS a bad name in the Israeli public. In June, members of the Public Committee Against Torture met with MK David Libai, Chairman of the Knesset State Control Committee. They reminded him of the section in the Landau Commission, which notes that the GSS as a state institution should be subject to control by the State Comptroller. The Landau report explicitly recommended that this control should not be limited to matters of finance etc:
We recommend that the State Comptroller also conduct an examination of the activities of the GSS investigator unit. Our intention is not that it should go into specific complaints of persons under investigation or on their behalf; rather its examination will relate to the regularity of investigations in accordance with the law and with the guidelines laid down according to law. For this purpose, the Comptroller's staff will have free access to the premises of the investigators' unit and will also be able to perform sample examinations on the way in which investigations are conducted. It will also be able to examine the physical condition of the investigation and detention premises used by the investigator's unit [Landau Report, Para. 4.19 (d)]
The Landau Commission then went on to recommend that reports from these examinations "…should be submitted to a special subcommittee of the Knesset State Comptroller Committee, the discussions of which will be assured full confidentiality."
These recommendations had not been implemented at all, nor did the relevant Knesset Committee even seem aware of them. On June 18, however, the State Control Committee held a meeting on the subject of the B'Tselem report and decided to establish a Sub-Committee for control and supervision of GSS Interrogations. MK David Libai requested that a Sub-Committee comprise four members. MK Eliyahu Ben Eliassar, however, opposed this, demanding that the Sub-Committee consist only of himself and Libai, since up to that time, they had been the only people who had read the State Comptroller's report on the GSS and the Mossad. The demand of MK's Dedi Zucker and Haim Oron to be included on the Sub-Committee was denied. The Sub-Committee consists, therefore, of David Libai as Chairman, Eliyahu Ben Aliassar and Reuven Rivlin from the Likud, and MK Mordechai Gur from the Labor Alignment. 22
As yet, however, nine months later, since the State Comptroller has not issued a report, this Sub-Committee has not met, nor has the head of the GSS been invited to appear before the Committee (as Chairman, MK David Libai promised).




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