TEL
AVIV, January 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A Lebanese
abductee, to be freed within hours, told a Tel Aviv court Tuesday,
January 27, he had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by his Israeli
interrogators.
Too
ashamed to repeat the order given by an intelligence major codenamed
"George", Mustafa Dirani, once a security chief of the
Lebanese Amal Movement, told the court George threatened to
"S-C-R-E-W me."
"In
our community we don't use such words," he was quoted by Reuters
as telling the court, which is examining his claim for 6 million
shekels ($1.34 million) in compensation.
Dirani
was abducted by Israeli commandos from his home in Lebanon's Bekaa
region in 1994, for information on missing air force navigator Ron
Arad, who was captured by Amal fighters in 1986.
He
told the court he was taken to a facility in Israel, stripped naked,
shackled and brutally interrogated around the clock for a month by six
people, including George, reported the Israeli Haaretz daily.
Dirani,
who needed a walking stick to take the stand, insisted that he had
only confessed to involvement in the airman's handover to Iran under
torture.
He
asserted that George used to threaten and curse him and repeatedly
squeezed his testicles "until I felt I would die."
One
day, Dirani recalled, George brought a uniformed soldier nicknamed
Kojak and threatened the soldier would sodomize me if I did not talk.
"They
wanted to know how they transferred Ron Arad by car, but I did not
see. I wasn't there. They wanted details I did not have."
Dirani,
52, recalled that days later, he was shackled and pushed down onto a
bench.
"I
couldn't see or resist ... I was raped by the soldier. He said he
would rape me, and he did," the Lebanese detainee told the court,
identifying George from a photograph shown to him.
He
also recounted another incident in which a police baton was inserted
into his rectum.
"Two
or three days later they started raping me with a police baton….He
put it in and I thought I was going to die.
"It's
impossible to describe the pain. I yelled to high heaven."
A
video cassette given to several news outlets Tuesday showed an unnamed
interrogator talking about working with George, who dealt with all
prisoners under interrogation, including Iranians and Syrians,
reported Haaretz.
"I
remember one instance that I still feel until today, which makes me
shudder, in which a baton was used - not for hitting," he said.
"Even
in the field, George did what he wanted, in front of my eyes and the
eyes of everyone else."
Israeli
state prosecutor Shammai Becker argued the charges "have no basis
whatsoever."
Although
Israel denies its security services use torture, the Supreme Court
allowed in 1996 "moderate physical pressure" - including
sleep deprivation and violent shaking of a subject, a ruling decried
by human rights groups.
The
Israeli court had spurned a petition brought late Monday night by the
state, to have the court hold a closed-door session, said Haaretz.
