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Palestinian Tortured to Madness in Israeli Jail
AL-KHALIL, July 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian political detainee tortured at an Israeli occupation detention camp has gone mad, according to a human rights organization based in the occupied West Bank town of Nablus, news agencies reported.
The organization, the International Solidarity Society for Human Rights (ISSHR), said in a statement issued Monday that Jalal Abdul Jabbar, interned without charge or trial for six months, is suffering from "grave mental and psychological disorder" due to severe psychological and physical torture by Israeli soldiers, news agencies reported.
Abdul Jabbar, from the village of Jalgamous near Jenin, was detained in February on suspicions that he took part in anti-Israeli protests, the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported.
The ISSHR statement said Israeli prison authorities not only refused to provide medical and psychological counseling for Abdul Jabbar, but also placed him in solitary confinement - which is likely to exacerbate his already grave condition.
Israel often treats non-Jewish inmates as "sub-human beings", denying them basic human rights and subjecting them to many forms of psychological and physical torture, the group said.
Israel is the world's only country where torture is sanctioned by the law, rights groups say.
Meanwhile, at least eight cases have been filed against Israeli soldiers for abuse and harassment of Palestinians at military checkpoints in recent months, and more are pending, news agencies reported Israeli military officials as saying.
Palestinians and human rights workers in the West Bank say checkpoint harassment has been common in the past 10 months of fighting. Soldiers have routinely locked Palestinians in their cars for hours in the sun - with the windows rolled up, confiscated their keys, slashed their tires and stopped all cars from passing for hours at a time.
The army is trying to post older reserve soldiers at the crossings since they are often less "hot-tempered", a military officer told news agencies Monday on the condition of anonymity.
The officer would not discuss the details of the cases, but said there are more pending beyond the eight already filed.
The army spokesman's office, which confirmed the eight cases, said the army "strongly disapproves" of what it described as isolated incidents of inappropriate behavior. Soldiers involved, it claimed, are "severely punished."
The spokesman's office also would not provide details of the cases.
Ahmed Hassem Hanani, a 56-year-old Palestinian taxi driver, said soldiers at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus stopped him on July 6, and upon finding a poster of one of his late relatives who worked in Palestinian security, began questioning him about it, news agencies reported.
Hanani said soldiers took away his keys at 3 p.m. and ordered him to stay in his car with the windows rolled up.
"At 6 p.m., I felt I was going to die and started waving my hands to the soldiers," he said in an interview.
Hanani said a Palestinian in the area saw what had happened and alerted a nearby Israeli-Palestinian security office. Hanani was released when another Israeli officer came to the roadblock, the taxi driver said.
The next day, Hanani said the same soldiers locked him in his car for three more hours, as punishment for getting them in trouble.
Hanani did not return to the crossing until the soldiers had been transferred four days later.
A distant relative of Hanani, Maher Tawfiq Hanani, 37, said he, too, was locked in his closed car at the same checkpoint on the same afternoon for about three hours.
Maher Hanani said that the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, came to him and took his testimony. It was not clear whether the eight cases being investigated included those of the Hananis.
Hashem Abu Hassan, a Palestinian B'Tselem activist from Nablus, said checkpoint harassment "seems like policy in all areas."
On the Bethlehem side of a checkpoint on Monday, cab driver Michael Bandak, 40, told of the several times when Israeli soldiers confiscated his Palestinian identification card for several hours, because he got too close to the crossing when picking up passengers.
"There aren't any laws for these soldiers," said Bandak. "They can do whatever they want."
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