US agency co-operating with
Palestinian counterparts who allegedly torture Hamas supporters in
West Bank
By Ian Cobain in Ramallah
The Guardian,
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly
torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation
Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the
CIA, the Guardian has learned.
Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order
that prohibited
torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees
in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with
security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely
documented by
human rights groups.
The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies
involved – Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General
Intelligence Service (GI) – is said by some western diplomats and
other officials in the region to be so close that the American
agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work.
One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence]
Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian
services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the
agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of
the war on terror".
While the CIA and the Palestinian Authority (PA) deny the US
agency controls its Palestinian counterparts, neither denies that
they interact closely in the West Bank. Details of that co-operation
are emerging as some human rights organisations are beginning to
question whether US intelligence agencies may be turning a blind eye
to abusive interrogations conducted by other countries' intelligence
agencies with whom they are working. According to the Palestinian
watchdog al-Haq, human rights in the West Bank and
Gaza have "gravely deteriorated due to the spreading violations
committed by Palestinian actors" this year.
Most of those held without trial and allegedly tortured in the
West Bank have been supporters of Hamas, which won the Palestinian
elections in 2006 but is denounced as a terrorist organisation by
the PA – which in turn is dominated by the rival Fatah political
faction – and by the US and EU. In the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has
been in control for more than two years, there have been reports of
its forces detaining and torturing Fatah sympathisers in the same
way.
Among the human rights organisations that have documented or
complained about the mistreatment of detainees held by the PA in the
West Bank are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, al-Haq and
the Israeli watchdog B'Tselem. Even the PA's human rights commission
has expressed "deep concern" over the mistreatment of detainees.
The most common complaint is that detainees are severely beaten
and subjected to a torture known as shabeh, during which
they are shackled and forced to assume painful positions for long
periods. There have also been reports of sleep deprivation, and of
large numbers of detainees being crammed into small cells to prevent
rest. Instead of being brought before civilian courts, almost all
the detainees enter a system of military justice under which they
need not be brought before a court for six months.
According to PA officials, between 400 and 500 Hamas sympathisers
are held by the PSO and GI.
Some of the mistreatment has been so severe that at least three
detainees have died in custody this year. The most recent was
Haitham Amr, a 33-year-old nurse and Hamas supporter from Hebron who
died four days after he was detained by GI officials last June.
Extensive bruising around his kidneys suggested he had been beaten
to death. Among those who died in GI custody last year was Majid
al-Barghuti, 42, an imam at a village near Ramallah.
While there is no evidence that the CIA has been commissioning
such mistreatment, human rights activists say it would end promptly
if US pressure was brought to bear on the Palestinian authorities.
Shawan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq, said: "The Americans
could stop it any time. All they would have to do is go to [prime
minister] Salam Fayyad and tell him they were making it an issue..
Then they could deal with the specifics: they could tell him that
detainees needed to be brought promptly before the courts."
A diplomat in the region said "at the very least" US intelligence
officers were aware of the torture and not doing enough to stop it.
He added: "There are a number of questions for the US
administration: what is their objective, what are their rules of
engagement? Do they train the GI and PSO according to the manual
which was established by the previous administration, including
water-boarding? Are they in control, or are they just witnessing?"
Sa'id Abu-Ali, the PA's interior minister, accepted detainees had
been tortured and some had died, but said such abuses had not been
official policy and steps were being taken to prevent them. He said
such abuses "happen in every country in the world". Abu-Ali sought
initially to deny the CIA was "deeply involved" with the two
Palestinian intelligence agencies responsible for the torture of
Hamas sympathisers, but then conceded that links didexist. "There is a connection, but there is no supervision
by the Americans," he said. "It is solely a Palestinian affair. But
the Americans help us."
The CIA does not deny working with the PSO and GI in the West
Bank, although it will not say what use it has made of intelligence
extracted during the interrogation of Hamas supporters. But it
denies turning what one official described as "a Nelson's eye to
abuse".
The CIA's spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, denied it played a
supervisory role over the PSO or GI. "The notion that this agency
somehow runs other intelligence services … is simply wrong," he
said. "The CIA … only supports, and is interested in, lawful methods
that produce sound intelligence."
Concern about detainee abuse is growing in the West Bank despite
an effort by the international community to create Palestinian
institutions that will guarantee greater security as a first step
towards creating a Palestinian state. More than half of the PA's
$2.8bn (£1.66bn) budget came from international donors last year;
more than a quarter was swallowed up by the ministry of the interior
and national security. Human Rights Watch and al-Haq have said that
in raising the security capacity of the PA, donor countries have a
responsibility to ensure it observes international human rights
standards.
At the heart of the international effort is the creation of the
Palestinian national security force, a 7,500-strong gendarmerie
trained by US, British, Canadian and Turkish army officers under the
command of a US general, Keith Dayton. Many Palestinians blame
Dayton for the mistreatment of Hamas sympathisers, although the
general's remit does not extend to either of the intelligence
agencies responsible.
Some in Dayton's team are said to have been warned by senior CIA
officers that they should not attempt to interfere in the work of
the PSO or GI. Privately, some of them are said to fear that the
mistreatment of detainees, and the anger this is arousing among the
population, may undermine their mission. One source said: "I know
that Dayton and his crew are very concerned about what is happening
in those detention centres because they know it can jeopardise their
work."
