http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=55394&mador=4
Ha'aretz,
Tuesday, September 7, 1999
Contorted bodies and twisted minds
By Gideon Levy
Omar Ranimat has trouble sitting down. He also
finds it difficult to stand, walk or climb
stairs. When I met him just a few weeks ago, two
and a half years after his interrogation by the
Shin Bet, which lasted 45 days and nights, he was
a wreck. A friend, Abed Al-Ahmed, vomited almost
daily for two years after his interrogation. When
I met him recently, he seemed have finally
mended.
Ranimat and Ahmed, like thousands of other
Palestinians, underwent routine Shin Bet
treatment - the "shabah", the "gift," the "frog,"
sleep deprivation, ear-splitting non-stop music,
a stinking sack over the head, a foot on the
testicles and abrasive handcuffs on the wrists
and ankles. Most had no connection whatever with
ticking bombs.
It is difficult to believe that many Israelis
would be able to withstand what they suffered. It
is difficult to believe that many Israelis have
even tried to imagine what would happen if they
were tied for dozens of days and nights in
contorted positions that only twisted minds could
come up with, shaken, deprived of sleep,
humiliated, frozen, beaten and harassed. But
thousands of Palestinians have gone through this
and they carry the scars - both physical and
emotional - with them to this day.
Once, I dined with four members of the
Palestinian Legislative Council who told me of
the torture they had suffered at the hands of
Shin Bet interrogators during the Intifada. Their
descriptions are too grisly to be printed here,
but the four related them with equanimity. They
opened a new chapter long ago. Only the Shin Bet
refuses to put the past behind it. First, its
agents denied everything, attributing all the
accusations to lies by the Arabs. Then they spoke
of "irregular" cases. Finally, they established a
procedure of authorizations and forms for
torture, and the entire time they persisted in
their methods. A battery of jurists, politicians
and doctors protected them the whole time. Now
the High Court of Justice has decided to put an
end to it all.
When Ranimat appeared two years ago before the
very same judges who yesterday decided that the
Shin Bet does not have the authority to act as it
did, showing his wrists, cut to the flesh by
handcuffs, and asking the court to put an end to
his torture - the Supreme Court refused to
intervene. It behaved the same way in the cases
of other Palestinians under interrogation by the
Shin Bet. Only now, late but very resolutely, has
the Supreme Court decided that "painful handcuffs
are forbidden," that sitting on a deliberately
painful stool "is not included in the general
authorization of interrogation," that "reasonable
interrogation is one that is carried out without
the use of torture," and that "human dignity
includes that of detainees under interrogation."
Where, it must be asked, have they been until
now? After all, the matter of torture has been
brought before the court many times over the
years. For Ranimat and Ahmed and others like
them, it is too late. They will apparently carry
the physical and emotional scars of their
interrogations with them forever. But Israeli
society rid itself yesterday of a terrible
abscess.
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