When former Guantanamo Bay detainee Asadullah Haroon looks at photographs of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, memories of his own abuse and torture in US detention centers come flooding back.
“This is the worst form of oppression,” he says. “When you are labeled a terrorist, you cannot defend yourself in any way. Without a doubt it is the same process; they are torturing people in the same way. I think it was the Americans who did it and the Israelis who are implementing it.”
Haroon, who won his case against the US government for illegal imprisonment in 2021, was detained without charge in Cuba’s notorious Guantanamo Bay prison for 16 years after his arrest in 2007. Without a doubt, he says, the Palestinians Detainees in Israeli prisons are now facing treatment similar to what he experienced.
“It’s like the first few days I was arrested, I was beaten to the point of standing; I couldn’t sit, or if I was sitting and beaten, I couldn’t get up. The same thing happened with insomnia and I was attacked for several days. Many prisoners were bitten by dogs. We receive very little medical care.
“The physical torture was very bad, but the worst was the mental torture in different forms. I believe there is not much difference in the torture of prisoners in Palestine, Guantánamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib.”
Attacked by dogs and deprived of water
Some 54 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza in October last year, according to the Commission for the Affairs of Detainees and Former Detainees in Gaza. The United Nations Office for Human Rights in Palestine says it has received multiple reports of mass detentions, prisoner abuse and enforced disappearances of Palestinians for months, while harrowing testimonies have been provided to aid agencies or posted on social media by Palestinians who were released. of detention.
In late April, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published details of the abuse of Palestinian prisoners who had been detained without trial.
His report included descriptions of regular beatings, of prisoners attacked by dogs, of being forced to kiss the Israeli flag, of being forced to curse the Prophet Muhammad, of being deprived of water (including to a toilet in a cell shared by 10 prisoners), electricity being cut off, having insufficient food and being stripped naked.
One prisoner’s account says: “A guard then began to stick carrots up AH and other prisoners’ anuses.”
Many of the abuses committed in Israeli prisons were filmed by the soldiers who committed them. It has strong echoes in the treatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners in US detention centers such as the notorious Abu Ghraib prison – where US soldiers photographed themselves alongside prisoners in humiliating positions in 2003.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and other human rights organizations have called on the United Nations special rapporteur on torture to take urgent action to end “the systematic abuse, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners and Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and detentions.” installations”.
This presentation by Adalah, HaMoked, Doctors for Human Rights Israel and PCATI describes a “brutal escalation” characterized by what appears to be systemic violence, torture and ill-treatment against Palestinians in Israeli custody in seven different prisons and detention centers since its inception. . of the war in October.
Lawyers and activists say Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners bears all the hallmarks of “US-style” abuse and torture.
“Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, the US has set the world a terrible example of how prisoners should be treated,” says human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who was one of the first lawyers to gain access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. . for more than 20 years and represented clients, including Haroon, who eventually won release from prison.
“Whether it is ISIS (ISIL) copying the orange uniforms, or other countries, including Israel, according to the UN, using abusive interrogation methods, all of this can be attributed to the sordid example of Guantanamo Bay and other secret US prisons ,” Stafford Smith says. “It is past time for the US to admit its terrible mistakes and insist once again that both the US and the rest of the world behave in a civilized manner.”
Done at no cost
Of the 9,500 political prisoners, more than 3,500 Palestinians are detained without charge in Israeli prisons. Although thousands of people were already in prison before the war in Gaza began in October last year, many more have been detained or re-arrested since then.
Detainees without charge can be detained indefinitely by the Israeli military for renewable periods, based on “secret evidence” that neither the detainees nor their lawyers are allowed to see. Activists and human rights lawyers consider these people hostages without legal recourse.
Others who have suffered similar detention, torture and abuse at the hands of US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan agree with them.
Moazzam Begg is a human rights defender who was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay for three years without charge. He also draws parallels with what Israelis call administrative detention, under which Palestinians can be arrested and denied their legal rights.
“There is a clear parallel between Gaza and Guantánamo and the war on terrorism,” says Begg. “What you see from the treatment, from the stripping of prisoners to the mistreatment, to the abuse of religious and racial attributes. There is absolutely a parallel. It’s undeniable.”
Begg says what happened to him two decades ago, first in the Afghan prison at Bagram and then at Guantanamo Bay, is still happening. “I returned to Afghanistan several times. I returned to the Bagram detention center, where I was stripped and beaten. I was tied up with other prisoners. I observed the abuse of other prisoners. I witnessed the murder of other prisoners by American soldiers.
“And those American soldiers continued to do what they did from here, almost like a copy of a textbook at Abu Ghraib [the notorious prison in Iraq where US soldiers abused detainees in 2003 and 2004], what was done to us in Guantánamo. Once again, the stripping, the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Human rights groups demand an urgent international investigation to hold those responsible for the torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, which documented the testimonies of former Palestinian prisoners, said: “The information gathered leads to the conclusion that the Israeli army routinely and widely commits crimes of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, intentional homicide, torture, crimes, inhumane treatment, sexual violence and denial of a fair trial.
“Detainees were also denied access to food and medical care, including critical and life-saving care, were spat on and urinated on, and were subjected to other cruel and degrading acts and psychological abuse, including threats of rape and death, insults and other forms of sexual violence.”
Despite these calls for justice from human rights groups and lawyers, Begg says he is not optimistic that things will change in the near future. “There is no hope. I don’t see any hope in relation to international law, in relation to United Nations resolutions – many of them have been violated.
“And the same happens with Israel, which commits genocide, ethnic cleansing and the attack of children, happening at a time when we affirm that human rights laws and international law are generalized.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
