The Prevalence of Torture

The use of torture in Israeli prisons has been the subject of extensive inquiry. In 1977, the London Sunday Times conducted a five-month investigation. Corroboration was obtained for the evidence adduced. The torture documented occurred “through the ten years of Israeli occupation since 1967.

The Sunday Times study presented the cases of forty-four Palestinians who were tortured. It documented practices in seven centers: prisons within the four principal cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Gaza; the interrogation and detention center in Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound or Moscobiya; and special military centers located in Gaza and Sarafand.

The investigation resulted in concrete conclusions: Israeli interrogators routinely ill-treat and torture Arab prisoners. Prisoners are hooded or blindfolded and are hung by their wrists for long periods. Most are struck in the genitals or in other ways sexually abused. Many are sexually assaulted. Others are administered electric shock.

Prisoners are placed in specially constructed “cupboards” two feet square and five feet high with concrete spikes set in the floor. And maltreatment, including “prolonged beatings,” is universal in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Torture is so widespread and systematic, concludes the Sunday Times, that it cannot be dismissed as the work of “rogue cops” exceeding orders. It is sanctioned as deliberate policy and all Israeli security and intelligence services are involved:

• Shin Bet, equivalent to the F.B.I. and Secret Service in the United States, reports directly to the office of the Prime Minister
• Military Intelligence reports to the Minister of Defense
• Border Police administer all checkpoints. There are checkpoints throughout the territories occupied since 1967, as there are at the borders
• Latam is part of the Department of Special Missions
• A para-military squad is assigned to police units.

Patterns of Torture in Post-’67 Occupied Territories

Each detention center features interrogators with “apparent predilections.” The Russian Compound [Moscobiya] interrogators in Jerusalem “favor assaults on the genitals, besides endurance tests such as holding a chair with outstretched arms or standing on one leg.”

The specialty of the military center at Sarafand is to blindfold prisoners for long periods, assault them with dogs and hang them by their wrists. The specialty at Ramallah is “anal assault.” Electric shock torture is used almost universally.


Fazi Abdel Wahed Nijim was arrested in July 1970. He was tortured at Sarafand and set upon by dogs. Arrested again in July 1973, he was beaten in Gaza prison. Zudhir al-Dibi was arrested in February 1970 and interrogated in Nablus where he was whipped and beaten on the soles of his feet. His testicles were squeezed and he was hosed with ice water.

Shehadeh Shalaldeh was arrested in August 1969 and interrogated at Moscobiya. A ballpoint refill was pushed into his penis. Abed al-Shalloudi was held without trial for sixteen months. Blindfolded and handcuffed while at Moscobiya, he was beaten by Naim Shabo, an Iraqi Jew, Director of the Minorities Department.
Jamil Abu Ghabiyr was arrested in February 1976 and held in Moscobiya. He was beaten on the head, body and genitals and made to lie in ice water. Issam Atif al Hamoury was arrested in October 1976. In Hebron prison the authorities arranged his rape by a prisoner trustee.


In February 1969, Rasmiya Odeh was arrested and brought to Moscobiya. Her father, Joseph, and two sisters were detained for interrogation. Joseph Odeh was kept in one room while Rasmiya was beaten nearby. When they brought him to her she was lying on the floor in blood-stained clothes. Her face was blue, her eye black. In his presence, they held her down and shoved a stick into her vagina. One of the interrogators ordered Joseph Odeh “to fuck” his daughter. When he refused they began beating both him and Rasmiya. They again spread her legs and shoved the stick into her. She was bleeding from the mouth, face and vagina when Joseph Odeh fell unconscious.



The patterns of torture reported by the Sunday Times are similar to those found in hundreds of testimonies published by Israeli lawyers, Felicia Langer and Lea Tsemel, by Palestinian lawyers Walid Fahoum and Raja Shehadeh, by Amnesty International and the National Lawyers Guild and the series of accounts this author documented from former prisoners.



This record is established in the West Bank as early as 1968, one year after the occupation began. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross does not, as a rule, make public declarations, it had prepared in 1968 a finding of torture. Its Report on Nablus Prison concluded:

A number of detainees have undergone torture during interrogation by the military police. According to the evidence, the torture took the following forms:

1. Suspension of the detainee by the hands and the simultaneous traction of his other members for hours at a time until he loses consciousness
2. Burns with cigarette stubs
3. Blows by rods on the genitals
4. Tying up and blindfolding for days
5. Bites by dogs
6. Electric shocks at the temples, the mouth, the chest and testicles.

 and so on and so on. I can't write all because it's make me sick.....