The head of the General Security Services, Israel’s internal security organization, clashed Tuesday with members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee over their premature criticism of his agency in the death of a Palestinian security suspect while under detention.
The unidentified chief of the Shin Bet, as the agency is best known, made a rare appearance before the Knesset body to voice his displeasure over its criticism, which appears to have been refuted by a coroner’s report saying that Mustafa Akawai had died of a heart attack, a result of arteriosclerosis.
Akawai died Feb. 4 at a Hebron military prison, after having previously shown signs of beatings on his body.
The Shin Bet head said all agency operatives have been instructed to cooperate with the investigation of the case, which has drawn expressions of concern from the U.S. State Department.
He chastised the 19 Knesset members who joined a demand for an investigation into alleged torture. He said they refused to admit they had been mistaken after the pathologist’s report showed that Akawai, 33, died of a heart attack.
The Shin Bet head reportedly said the attacks on the agency had been unjustified and damaging to its officers.
But Yossi Sarid, of the Citizens Rights Movement, insisted no apologies were in order.
He said the demand for an inquiry had been justified because security prisoners have died in the past as a result of maltreatment by their inquisitors.
Sarid said “troubling questions” in the Akawai affair still need to be answered. He said he would demand an investigation at any future time that a prisoner dies under interrogation.
Dr. Michael Baden, an American forensic expert who witnessed the post-mortem at the request of Akawai’s family, concurred in the verdict of death due to heart attack.
But he did not entirely absolve the Israeli authorities, nothing that conditions in the prison could have contributed to his cardiac failure, and earlier hospitalization might have saved the prisoner’s life.
In Washington, the State Department said Monday that it was “concerned about reports coming out of Israel on this situation. We’ve raised them with the Israeli authorities.”
The prisoner displayed wounds and bruises in a military court the day before his death, which he claimed were inflicted by his questioners. The judge ordered a medical examination but refused a request by Akawai’s lawyer to release him for treatment.
The Shin Bet chief said the prison medical examination had shown nothing.
He said Akawai, an alleged member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had a long record of arrests since 1983. He was last detained on Jan. 22. According to the Shin Bet, he underwent a routine medical examination, which detected no problems, nor had Akawai complained of any.
During his detention, he complained once of an earache. A week ago, he complained twice of not feeling well and lost consciousness. Efforts to revive him failed and he was pronounced dead, the Shin Bet head said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
