JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli agencies shackle Palestinian detainees in painful ways that amount to torture and ill treatment, an Israeli rights group claims.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel issued a report Wednesday that says the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security services "shackle detainees in painful and humiliating manners that in a number of instances rise to the level of torture in violation of domestic law."
The painful shackling, according to the organization, is a matter of practice in Israel and is done "for invalid and irrelevant reasons, which include causing pain and suffering, punishment, intimidation, and illegally eliciting information and confessions."
According to the report, the method is counter to Israeli law and violates Supreme Court rulings and international law. It said the detainees also are shackled during medical treatment in hospitals.
The report is based on 547 cases of arrest by soldiers and dozens of interrogations by the Shin Bet in the last year.
It calls on the agencies to cease blanket shackling of detainees and when there is justification to shackle a detainee, to do it in a manner that does not cause pain and is proportional to the need. It also calls for the video and audio taping of interrogations.
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