Israel Admits Holding Palestinian Detainees in Secret Dentition Center

News, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

30/06/2003

Palestine Media Center- (PMC)

Israel admitted on Monday that it has held Palestinian detainees incommunicado for weeks at a time at a secret detention center in violation of international law, the AP reported.

The detainees said they were blindfolded and kept in black, windowless cells. When they asked where they were, they were told “On the moon.”

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency refused to say where the center is located or who is being kept there, but hints foreigners are among the prisoners.

Israel’s attorney confirmed the existence of the center, known as facility 1391, in a June 9 response to a Supreme Court petition filed by Israeli human rights group over missing detainees Bashar and Muhammad Jodallah.

However, Israel would only say the center was located at a secret army base, claiming that revealing the location would jeopardize “national security”.

Shin Bet further alleged it only used the center for a brief period when Israel’s invasion of the West Bank in April last year.

Since then, all Palestinian detianees have been moved, and the center “is used, if at all, for special circumstances, for detainees who are not residents of the territories,” Israeli sources said. It was not clear which law enforcement agency continues to use the facility.

Both the IOF and the prime minister’s office, which is responsible for Shin Bet, refused to comment on the identities and nationalities of detianees kept there, or what is meant by “special circumstances.”

The secret center detainees’ names are not published on any list; during their incarceration, they effectively disappear.

“A secret detention center would be a violation of both the 4th Geneva Convention and Israeli law,” said Yael Stein of the Israeli rights group B’tselem. “If no one knows where detainees are being held, then they can do what they want with them. They can torture and abuse them, or even kill them, and no one would know.”

Human rights groups say they know of at least seven Palestinians who were held at the center, but say it is impossible to confirm how many have been through there in all.

Former detainees said they were kept in bewildering isolation during their time at the center.

Bashar Jodallah, 50, a clothes salesman from Nablus, was detained with his cousin Muhammad in November 2002 while crossing into Israel from Jordan. He was held for three months, of which he said 38 days were spent at the secret facility.

The two cousins were blindfolded for the trip to the facility, where they were separated and did not see each other again, Bashar told AP.

He said he was placed in a small, solitary cell with a concrete bed. “The walls and the ceilings were painted black, with no windows. Only a very faint light came from above, so I could not tell if it was day or night,” he said.

Every time he was moved from his cell, Jodallah said he was handcuffed and blindfolded with a combination of dark glasses and a black cloth.

The only face he was allowed to see was that of the prison doctor.

“I kept asking them where I was,” he said. “The soldiers told me that I was on the moon, and that no one knew where I was ... Sometimes they would tell me I was in space.”

Prisoners were also forbidden to talk to each other.

“Once I heard two prisoners speaking. The soldiers came like crazy, shouting and abusing them,” Jodallah said.

While prisoners said they weren’t physically harmed, Jodallah said the psychological pressure was immense.

“Not knowing where I was, the color of the rooms, the isolation, really affected me,” he said. “I just wanted to die.”

Prisoners also reported hearing that Mustafa Dirani and Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid, two Lebanese Hizbullah leaders kidnapped by Israel, were held at the center.

In a sworn deposition, a copy of which was obtained by AP, Dirani described a facility that also matched Jodallah’s description.

Israel has held Obeid and Dirani since 1989 and 1994 respectively under special “security laws” and have not been tried.

For years, their lawyer, Zvi Rish, appealed in vain for information on their whereabouts. “I had no idea where they were being held,” he said.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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