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WASHINGTON (Islam Online & News Agencies) - Orlando, Florida resident Anwar Mohammed, who was imprisoned in Israel for 40 days in 1998 without ever being charged with a crime, states that he received no aid from United States Consulate offices while he was incarcerated.
Anwar's ordeal will be presented on a CNN&TIME report, "An American in Israel," which will air Sunday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) on CNN/U.S. Anwar said that the U.S. State Department did little to help free him, though he claimed his Israeli captors were torturing him. Mohammed, who was in Israel visiting his Palestinian relatives, said he felt betrayed by his own government and accuses U.S. Consulate officials of not providing several of the services required in the State Department's own Foreign Service Manual. Describing his harrowing ordeal, Anwar stated, "They came in and threw me in a cell - just a concrete box." He said that he was left isolated until an investigator came and questioned him about his life in the United States, including where he worked. "I told him everything so they would let me go," Mohammed said. But they didn't, and he believes they wanted him to confess to membership in a terrorist group. The Israelis also refused to accept his passport. Mohammed said the investigator told him, "Your American passport doesn't mean anything to us. You're gonna die in here..." Allegations, like Anwar Mohammed's, concerning extra-legal detainment and torture within Israel's intelligence and law enforcement agencies comes on the heels of Israel's domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, announcing it is to appoint a spokesman and establish a public relations section to reply to journalists in order to improve its image, the daily Haaretz reported Wednesday. "We have to adapt to the 21st century", the paper quoted an anonymous senior official of the agency as saying. Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is personally in charge of Israel's secret services, will have to approve the idea of Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter, which should bear fruit in some two months, the report said. Haaretz said the spokesman would be a Shin Bet employee, but that outside public relations agencies could become involved. The biggest blow to Shin Bet's reputation was when it failed to prevent Jewish extremist Yigal Amir from assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv in November 1995. |
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