Martin Ennals, secretary general of Amnesty International, said today that in the abuse of Yom Kippur War prisoners, the weight of evidence was against Syria, although both Israel and Syria were guilty of abuses in violation of the Geneva Convention on POWs according to the report of a special investigating commission of Amnesty International that was released here today.
Addressing a press conference, Ennals said “It seems that the abuses perpetrated against Israeli POWs were generally of a more severe character” than those committee against Syrian POWs in Israel. That view was supported by Dr. Kees van Vuuren, a Dutch physician who was a member of the three-man Amnesty International commis- sion that visited Israel and Syria last October to interview former POWs and officials of both countries.
Dr. van Vuuren stressed that the lack of Syrian medical documentation and the commission’s inability to meet with Syrian doctors who had treated Israeli POWs had made its work “so much more difficult” and reinforced the case against Syria.
Ennals and Thomas Hammarberg, vice-chairman of Amnesty International’s executive committee, reiterated, however, that the purpose of the report was not to condemn or allocate blame but to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. They said that both Israel and Syria were guilty of abuses in their handling of POWs and stressed that both governments refused to permit the Amnesty International commission to examine allegations of maltreatment by civilian prisoners.
HAD IGNORED ISRAELI MEDICAL FILES
Referring to Israeli charges, published here, that the Amnesty International report had ignored medical files submitted by Israel to the International Red Cross, Dr. van Vuuren admitted that he had not seen such files. Ennals explained that all material submitted to the Red Cross was classified and not made available to other bodies and organizations. The Red Cross has to maintain good relations with all governments and is therefore unable to fulfill a watch-dog role or to exercise control of the treatment of POWs which was the responsibility of the community of nations, Ennals said.
He said this sense of responsibility has increased among the world’s nations since the Yom Kippur War which highlighted the failure of the present system of assuring proper treatment of POWs. Dr. van Vuuren cited as an instance of this failure the fact that Red Cross missions to Israeli POWs in Syria were not accompanied by doctors. Ennals stressed that in releasing its report, Amnesty International did not want to provide fuel for the propaganda machinery of either side.
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