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III. West Bank: Abuses against Hamas

After Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority feared a similar fate might befall the West Bank. They took immediate steps to crack down on Hamas members and institutions, with the political and financial support of Israel, the United States and European Union, which likewise wanted to see Hamas’s influence in Palestinian politics reduced or eliminated.

“Yes, we were concerned that something may happen here like in Gaza,” the head of Preventive Security in the West Bank Ziyad Hab al-Rih told Human Rights Watch. “Our arrests and measures against Hamas came because of threats to our existence here and our political interests.”²⁹

The Fatah-dominated security forces moved swiftly in coordination with allied militias, notably the Al-Aqsa Brigades. Operating with impunity, fighters from the brigade openly attacked the offices of Hamas PLC members and Hamas-affiliated organizations and media outlets.³⁰ Across the West Bank, security forces arbitrarily detained Hamas or Hamas-affiliated officials.

Pro-Fatah gunmen outside the office of Hamas legislators in Nablus on June 14, 2007.  They looted and burned the office without police interference. © 2007 Abed Omar Qusini

Rabi’a H. Rabi’a, a lawyer and member of the Ramallah Municipal Council, who is not a member of Hamas but won his seat running on the Hamas list, was one of those arbitrarily arrested.³¹ Rabi’a told Human Rights Watch that, on the night of June 13, the alarm in his office went off, so he called the police and went to the office with his wife. The office was on fire but policemen were making no effort to douse the flames, he said. Human Rights Watch viewed a video taken by Rabi’a’s surveillance camera that night which showed the office filled with smoke.

While Rabi’a was there, about five masked and armed men arrived, saying they were from the Al-Aqsa Brigades, and told him to come with them. Rabi’a explained what happened next:

They took me to the parking lot next to the office. They were masked. They said shut up, we’re al-Aqsa. My wife tried to intervene but they told her to shut up and pointed their guns at her. There were lots of military and civilian vehicles around. They forced me into a Volkswagen Golf, put a sack on my head and cocked their guns. They shot in the air. They took me to a place far away and asked me what I thought about Gaza. I knew nothing. They took me in the trunk of a car, braking hard as they drove…

Then they took me to a building upstairs, I think it was military intelligence. There was a room with no one there. They took off my jacket and everything out of my pockets. Two others came, including my brother. We were not beaten but I heard others [getting beaten.] I stayed one and half days in that room, always with a sack on my head. They only took it off when I went to the bathroom. When the sack was off I saw six people there: my brother, Majid Saker, Yazid Abu Ghosh, Loay Quran, Sameh el-Ramawi and Iyaz Qattawi.³²

Rabi’a was released in the late evening of June 15. His brother was released the following day with one of the other detainees.

Human Rights Watch interviewed one of those detained with Rabi’a and his brother. The man, Iyaz Mohamed Qattawi, said he was arrested on June 14 and taken by men who identified themselves as Al-Aqsa Brigades members to the military intelligence headquarters in Ramallah. He stayed there for ten days without seeing any judge, he said, although he experienced no other maltreatment. On June 15 he said he saw six or seven other men, including Rabi’a and his brother.³³

On June 16, armed men affiliated with Al-Aqsa attacked the PLC offices of Hamas members in Nablus. According to Muna Mansoor, one of five Hamas PLC members from the town, “uncontrolled members of Fatah” fired on her office on seven different occasions before setting it on fire. “Every time they shot we called the police and the governor and we sent letters and I spoke about it in the PLC that we needed security. Nothing was done.”³⁴ Armed men similarly attacked Hamas offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, she said.

The open attacks on Hamas offices soon abated but the arbitrary detentions continued, sometimes with torture. First the West Bank security forces targeted Hamas members and supporters who they believed had arms. Abed al-Salam al-Souqi, head of military intelligence in Jenin, explained: “As a consequence of what happened in Gaza, we took steps to make sure it didn’t happen here. We arrested a number of Hamas members.”³⁵ Head of Preventive Security al-Rih agreed. “We have information they were preparing to do the same thing here as they did in Gaza,” he said. “This is based on confessions.”³⁶

On August 28, 2007, the West Bank authorities announced that they would close 103 organizations and associations because they had committed “legal administrative or financial violations.” The authorities denied that any political motives lay behind the decision. “We don’t look at who is Fatah and who is Hamas,” Fadwa al-Sha’r, General Director of NGO Administration at the Ministry of the Interior, told Human Rights Watch. “We look at the legal process.”³⁷ Nevertheless, all of the organizations had been registered after Hamas won the elections in January 2007. Palestinian human rights activists and lawyers defending some of the banned organizations told Human Rights Watch that the process had a clear political edge.³⁸ In total, the Hamas-led government had registered 125 organizations in the West Bank.

Over time, Fatah’s targets expanded to a wider selection of suspected Hamas activists and supporters who the authorities claimed might possess arms or somehow support an armed group. Security officials denied that they targeted non-violent political activists. “We target military activity or funding aimed at spreading unrest,” al-Rih said. “We don’t arrest anyone for political affiliation.”³⁹ A ministry of interior report on arrests after June 2007 stressed this view. “It is fair to say that not a single incident of arrest was without proper procedure,” the report said.⁴⁰ The evidence documented in this report and from other human rights organizations in the West Bank strongly refutes this claim.

According to Hamas, over the past year security forces in the West Bank are responsible for “killings, abductions and torture of Hamas members, and the destruction and burning of their institutions.” In particular, Prime Minister Haniya’s office told Human Rights Watch, security forces had committed the following abuses against Hamas members from June 14, 2007 to June 4, 2008: six killings,⁴¹ 56 shootings, 28 assaults or beatings, 1,936 kidnappings or abductions, and 297 attacks on Hamas institutions or property.⁴² Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm these numbers and a request to President Abbas’s office for information about law enforcement activity since June 2007 went unanswered. Regarding arrests and releases, Hamas said it could not provide any numbers because of its inability to follow cases in the West Bank. According to one media report, as of late June 2008, 54 Hamas members were imprisoned in the West Bank, but this number is unconfirmed.⁴³ In addition, the arrest of a Hamas member or supporter is not in itself a human rights abuse if the arrest is carried out according to the relevant law, including charging the detainee with recognizable crimes. West Bank security forces have consistently maintained that the Hamas members they arrest have illegally possessed weapons or otherwise violated the law.

In November 2007, the West Bank interior ministry opened the Palestinian Security Sciences Academy (PASS) in Jericho with funding from the EU and Saudi Arabia to train officers from the various security forces (see chapter, Role of International Donors). Some items on the academy’s website speak openly of suppressing Hamas rather than the general goal of law and order or arresting militant groups. According to a news item on the website announcing the academy’s opening, the cadets “are the vanguard of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s campaign to prevent the West Bank from falling to Hamas.”⁴⁴ According to the website, Abbas’s measures are targeted:

He’s closed dozens of Hamas charities, fired Hamas preachers, arrested hundreds of Hamas activists, including many gunmen, confiscated weapons and last weekend [October 2007] issued an anti-money laundering decree meant to dry up millions of dollars in donations from abroad.⁴⁵

Most of the arrests since June 2007 have been conducted by Preventive Security, the General Intelligence Service or military intelligence. Under Palestinian law, Preventive Security did not have the right to make arrests or run detention facilities prior to November 20, 2007, when President Abbas issued a decree giving them these powers.⁴⁶ Article 8 of the decree says Preventive Security must respect the rights enshrined in “Palestinian laws and charters and international treaties” but it also limits transparency by stating that “the information, activities and documents pertaining to the work of the Preventive Security shall be considered confidential and cannot be disclosed to anyone.”

The PLC has not approved the decree because it has not convened with a quorum since February 2006 but, according to the Basic Law, presidential decrees have the power of law until the PLC convenes and rejects them.⁴⁷

By the end of 2007, a pattern of abuse had emerged in relation to detentions and arrests of suspected Hamas officials and supporters. First, many of the arrests were unlawful. They often occurred without a warrant when a warrant could have been obtained, as required by Palestinian law.⁴⁸ In some cases, the arresting officials were masked, did not identify themselves and did not tell the person of the reason for their arrest. Families frequently got no information on the location of the relative who had been taken away.

Second, arrested individuals sometimes encountered maltreatment at the time of arrest or torture during interrogation. In two cases, one of them documented below, torture apparently led to a detainee’s death.⁴⁹  Torture is strictly forbidden under article 13 of the Palestinian Basic Law, which demands that all persons deprived of their freedom “receive proper treatment.” The Basic Law also provides that all statements or confessions obtained through duress or torture are “considered null and void.”

Based on Human Rights Watch interviews with victims, methods of torture used over the past year include: mock executions, kicks and punches, and beatings with sticks, plastic pipes and rubber hoses. In one case from February 2008, for example, a 36-year-old man who requested anonymity said he had campaigned for Hamas in the elections and was subsequently summoned to the General Intelligence Service headquarters in Ramallah. After questions about the Hamas organization and leaders, the beating began:

They took me into a room and told me to lie down. One guy put my legs over a chair. He put my legs over the back. Two interrogators came with water pipes. They asked the military guy to sit on my legs and they beat me on the bottom of my feet… I pushed the military man aside and they beat me all over, with no questions.⁵⁰

The GIS released the man after ten days without filing any charges, after he signed a document in which he promised to break all ties with Hamas. He was never accused of a crime, brought before an investigative judge, or provided access to a lawyer.

The General Intelligence Service (GIS) in Ramallah detained this man, released three days prior to this photo, for ten days in early 2008.  Interrogators beat him while he hung from a hook, he said. © 2008 Fred Abrahams/Human Rights Watch

The most common form of torture reported by victims and local human rights organizations to Human Rights Watch was keeping detainees in stress positions for prolonged periods, known in Arabic as shabah, causing extreme pain and sometimes internal injury but leaving no physical mark. Such positions include standing for hours with feet apart and hands tied behind the back, standing with one leg and one arm raised, or sitting on the edge of a chair with hands tied to the feet.⁵¹

In September 1999, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that the Israel Security Agency could not use physical means during interrogations, including the use of stress positions. However, the court also said that interrogators could not be held criminally liable if they used “physical pressure” against a detainee who was considered a “ticking bomb.” According to Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, despite the ruling, torture against Palestinian detainees still takes place, including shabah.⁵²

On May 23, 2008, Human Rights Watch asked President Abbas’s office to explain its official position with regards to shabah. As of July 10, the office had not replied.

Third, security forces have denied many detainees access to a lawyer—a right guaranteed in article 14 of the Basic Law. In the cases documented by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, officials failed to bring detainees before a prosecutor within 24 hours, as required by Palestinian law.⁵³ When judges did review cases and ordered detainees released, the security forces sometimes refused to comply. In October 2007, PICCR protested this practice as “unlawful” and “transgressing the independence of the judicial authority.”⁵⁴

Head of the Preventive Security al-Rih acknowledged that his forces sometimes ignored a judge’s order to release a detainee, but he argued this was consistent with the law. “Usually he’s released after a court decision,” he said. “In exceptional cases, we refuse and we transfer the person to military intelligence.” He added, “Sometimes we feel there’s something serious or dangerous, so we appeal through our legal advisor.”⁵⁵

According to Palestinian human rights organizations and available statistics, the overwhelming majority of detained individuals were released without trial, usually after signing a confession and promising to end their involvement with Hamas. Preventive Security commander al-Rih acknowledged this point when he told Human Rights Watch: “If a person confesses, he’ll be released.”⁵⁶ Some of the people whose cases are documented in this report were released in this way.

Human rights activists and lawyers point to the high number of releases without charge as an indicator of the arbitrary nature of those arrests. “The problem is not only how criminal trials are conducted, but if trials are conducted at all,” an Austrian judge who was advising the Palestinian civil police on rule of law issues under an EU program told a journalist.⁵⁷ According to the head of the Nablus prison, in late March 2008, roughly 22 of the prison’s 172 inmates had been convicted in court. Of Jericho’s 51 detainees, only 13 had received sentences.⁵⁸ A human rights activist in Hebron told Human Rights Watch that in his town there had been very few trials and, as of March 1, no known convictions.⁵⁹ An official with the EU’s EUPOL COPPS program, which works with the civil police (see chapter on Role of International Donors), told Human Rights Watch that, in his estimation, 80 percent of all detainees were pre-trial.⁶⁰

Those who did get a judicial review were often brought before a military rather than civilian court, lawyers and human rights activists said. The West Bank authorities argue that these are security cases, but such individuals could be tried in civilian courts for arms possession or other violations of Palestinian law.

Taken together, these abuses deeply trouble some Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists working in the West Bank. “There is no contact with the outside world because they [detainees] have no lawyer or family visits,” said Sahar Francis, director of the group Addameer, which mostly deals with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails but over the past year has also been addressing detention by Palestinian forces in the West Bank. “It’s a kind of isolation, sometimes 20 or 30 days.” Based on interviews with individuals after detention, Addameer has documented a pattern of shabah. “All of our cases are of people suspected of being Hamas,” Francis said.⁶¹

Khalida Jarrar, who is allowed to visit some detainees in Palestinian facilities as a member of the PLC’s monitoring and human rights committee, echoed these concerns. “I met prisoners in detention for 40 or 50 days without going before a court or seeing a lawyer or a family member,” she said.⁶² The prisoners told her stories of beatings, prolonged isolation and the use of shabah.

Local human rights organizations have recorded human rights abuses by all of the West Bank security forces, but the least problematic force appears to be the civil police, which deals primarily with common crimes. The most abusive forces, local groups say, are the Preventive Security or General Intelligence Service. Most of the abuses documented in this report were committed by one of these two forces.

Preventive Security, commanded by Ziyad Hab al-Rih, was integrated in 2005 into the ministry of interior, currently run by Abdel Razak al-Yahya, who reports to Prime Minister Fayyad.⁶³ The GIS, commanded by Tawfiq Tirawi, reports directly to President Abbas. Under article 39 of the Palestinian Basic Law,the president is the commander-in-chief of all Palestinian security forces.

Arrests in the West Bank have involved an apparent cooperation between Palestinian security forces and Israel, who share the common aim of restricting or eliminating Hamas. According to Preventive Security chief al-Rih, his forces and Israel have “the same goal with different objectives.” He added: “Coordination takes place within the framework of the interests of both people.”⁶⁴

The cases in this report and those collected by Palestinian human rights organizations suggest a degree of intelligence sharing between West Bank Palestinian forces and Israel. Palestinian forces frequently detained individuals who had previously spent time in Israeli detention on allegations of affiliation with Hamas. After their release from Palestinian detention, Israeli forces sometimes arrested these people again. According to Muna Mansoor, the Hamas PLC member from Nablus, from June to mid-October 2007, 53 people released by Palestinian forces were subsequently arrested by Israeli security.⁶⁵ Human Rights Watch could not confirm these numbers.

Since June 2007, Palestinian human rights groups have encountered increased restrictions on their work by Palestinian authorities. “After what happened in Gaza, our work became more complicated, more risky,” one human rights activist in the West Bank said.⁶⁶ “The authorities are less cooperative since June,” another activist said.⁶⁷ “They paid more attention to our complaints before June [2007], but now they tell us, ‘Why don’t you focus on Gaza.’”

In particular, Palestinian authorities in the West Bank have restricted local human rights groups from monitoring places of detention. When mass arrests began in June 2007, a coalition of groups wrote to the ministry of justice and various security agencies to request access, but they received no reply.⁶⁸

The exception is ICHR (formerly PICCR), which has a legal mandate to monitor the human rights practices of the PA in Gaza and the West Bank.⁶⁹ But even ICHR has faced restrictions on its work. Spontaneous visits were not allowed; they all required prior coordination with the authorities. Visit requests were sometimes denied, and at times approved visits were cancelled without explanation. Prior to visits, prisoners were sometimes moved, apparently to hide them from inspection.⁷⁰

The denial of access is not an abstract concern: in one case a visit might have saved a life. As documented below in the case of Majid al-Barghuti, ICHR twice requested permission to visit the Ramallah GIS facility in which al-Barghuti was being held on the days when he was apparently being tortured. The GIS failed to reply. According to ICHR, the authorities denied its investigators access to the intelligence detention facilities in Ramallah and Jericho from December 2007 to March 2008.⁷¹

At the same time, victims have become more afraid to talk. “We sense fear in families and among detainees to talk,” Sahar Francis of Addameer said. “Most request anonymity and some families don’t report out of fear.”⁷² A human rights activist in Hebron agreed. “For every person who reports abuse or maltreatment there are two who don’t report because they are afraid or they don’t see the use,” he said.⁷³

The concerns about underreporting due to fear extended into 2008, which may influence the reduced number of reported abuses so far this year. On May 6, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented two cases: the arbitrary arrest and torture in Qalqilya by Preventive Security of an unnamed victim and the search without warrant of the home of Kholoud Rashad Riziq El-Masri, a Nablus municipal council member, coupled with the arrest of her husband, Ammar Amin Riziq El-Masri. “Fieldworkers are finding it difficult to convince victims of providing testimonies; or they are asking for their identities to be withheld,” PCHR said when presenting the cases.⁷⁴

The vast majority of abuses in the West Bank documented in this report have gone unpunished. “In general, there are no procedures against security force members who use torture or abuse,” Mu'een Barghouthi, a Ramallah-based lawyer with ICHR said. He added: “In very few cases an abusive person is transferred. That’s all.”⁷⁵

In one case in Nablus documented by ICHR, military intelligence conducted an investigation after a complaint and determined that its forces had used torture against a detainee. A commander issued a written apology to the victim and promised to discipline the responsible persons, but ICHR did not know if this promise was fulfilled. According to Barghouthi, in a few cases, abusive security force members confessed and still avoided punishment.

On May 23, Human Rights Watch wrote to President Abbas’s office, requesting information on security force members who had been punished for having committed a human rights abuse, such as using excessive force, making an arrest without a warrant, using ill-treatment or torture against a detainee, denying a detainee the right to a lawyer, or refusing to release a detainee after a court order. As of July 10, Abbas’s office had not replied.

In interviews, security force commanders told Human Rights Watch that some force members have been punished. “If there are problems such as torture, we hold people responsible. People have been fired,” said Abed al-Salam al-Souqi, head of military intelligence in Jenin. “It depends on the seriousness of the offense. If it’s serious, the punishment must be proportionate.”⁷⁶ According to al-Souqi, 23 military intelligence officers have been imprisoned over the past year because they “assaulted someone outside.” None of those cases involved torture or maltreatment during interrogation.⁷⁷

Preventive Security chief al-Rih denied any systematic wrongdoing by his forces and said all those who violate the law are punished. He explained:

I believe a prison is not a resort. During interrogation a person should be subjected to a degree of maltreatment. They are not here for fun. But this is done in accordance with the law and under the direction of the office of the civilian and military prosecutor. And we are only targeting members who pose a threat – those with weapons. We have not targeted the party leadership or charity organizations. We also have medical controls, including a medical clinic. There is a daily check for every detainee.⁷⁸

Al-Rih stressed that his forces did not use “any physical force against detainees to extract confessions.” He said “the maximum we can do is restrain their movements,” but he denied that his forces used shabah:

In case any officer commits a violation – torture or maltreatment – we have special bodies to take disciplinary steps against that person to ensure he does not do what he did again and to convey a message to others that they are not free to act as they want, above the law.

According to al-Rih, “dozens” of Preventive Security officers had been punished for using torture or excessive force, but he declined to provide Human Rights Watch with a detailed list. He also said many claims of abuse were the result of Hamas propaganda.

The head of military intelligence in Jenin, Abed al-Salam al-Souqi, agreed with al-Rih’s points. “There are some violations carried out by individuals, but this is not supported by policy,” he said. “Hamas is strong in its propaganda.”⁷⁹

According to the Ministry of Interior’s Democracy and Human Rights Unit, most of the punishments of forces under its control are administrative: denial of promotion, demotion, and, on occasion, imprisonment. Between June and September 2007, the authorities arrested 188 individuals from different security forces, the head of the unit told Human Rights Watch in October 2007. However, this figure represents punishment for all abuses, such as drug use, theft and dereliction of duty, and not only for the use of excessive force, torture, or other human rights abuses. The ministry did not provide Human Rights Watch with a breakdown of the offenses for which security force members have been punished.

“There are no severe human rights violations against people being arrested by our security organs,” said Haitham Arar, head of the Democracy and Human Rights Unit. “But there will be some cases. If anyone complains we’ll look at this.⁸⁰

Below is a selection of human rights abuses by West Bank security forces documented by Human Rights Watch, in reverse chronological order.

Torture and Death in Custody of Imam Majid al-Barghuti

On February 14, 2008, members of the General Intelligence Service arrested Hamas member Majid al-Barghuti, the 42-year-old father of eight and the imam of a mosque in the village of Kobar, outside Ramallah. Eight days later, he was pronounced dead, apparently from injuries sustained during torture.

The family retrieved al-Barghuti’s body on February 24. Photos taken of the body that day, viewed by Human Rights Watch, show deep and extensive bruising on the legs, feet and back, consistent with marks caused from beatings. Both wrists had lacerations, apparently from handcuffs.

In response to al-Barghuti’s killing, the Palestinian Legislative Council formed an ad hoc committee to investigate his death. The committee released its report on April 3, concluding that al-Barghuti had been tortured and the Palestinian Authority was responsible for his death. The committee called on the PA to hold the responsible members of the GIS legally accountable and to ensure that torture in Palestinian Authority custody comes to an end.

President Abbas subsequently ordered an internal investigation, called for the perpetrators to be punished and for the general prosecutor’s office to increase inspections of all detention facilities.⁸¹ However, despite repeated inquiries, Human Rights Watch is unaware of any GIS member being held accountable for the death.

According to a witness, al-Barghuti was arrested in the afternoon of February 14 from outside his mosque in Kobar. “Four persons got out of a large vehicle and ran towards the imam, who was wearing an abaya,” he said. “I thought they were Israeli forces because they used to come that way. I saw no weapons.”⁸² They pushed al-Barghuti into the vehicle and another four men got out of another car with pistols, he said. The witness recognized one of the men as being from the GIS because they knew each other in an Israeli prison. The witness tried to use his personal contacts over the following days to learn information about al-Barghuti’s fate, but without success. The family likewise tried to learn where their relative had gone, calling offices and personal contacts in intelligence, to no avail.⁸³

Eight days later, on February 22, the family learned that al-Barghuti was being treated at al-Khaled Hospital in Ramallah. The brother went to the GIS headquarters in Ramallah but guards there refused to provide any information. Later that day, the family learned that al-Barghuti had died.

The head of the hospital, Jamal al-Tarifi, told the media that al-Barghuti was dead upon arrival. He declined to say whether doctors observed marks on the body or other signs of possible torture.⁸⁴

West Bank officials told the media that al-Barghuti had died of heart failure,⁸⁵but the family disputed that claim. “He wasn’t sick, he suffered no health problems,” al-Barghuti’s brother said.

Human Rights Watch interviewed two men who said they had witnessed GIS members torturing al-Barghuti in custody. Both men had been in custody at the GIS Ramallah headquarters at the time. They said they saw and heard al-Barghuti being beaten and then denied medical care.

One of the men, who claimed GIS officers also beat him extensively while he was hung from a hook on the wall, said he saw al-Barghuti in custody and then heard the security forces threatening and beating him. “We know you are with Hamas, where are the weapons?” he quoted them as saying. He said he saw al-Barghuti at various times over several days handcuffed to a wall with his hands behind his back. Human Rights Watch saw lacerations on both wrists of the witness, which he said were from metal handcuffs digging into his skin.

The other witness, interviewed separately, said he saw al-Barghuti in a variety of stress positions. In one position, Al-Barghuti had his hands tied behind his back and was hanging from the wall with his toes just touching the ground. In another position, his arms were tied behind his back and he was forced to stand with one leg in the air. The man said he also heard sounds of al-Barghuti getting beaten with a plastic pipe. “He kept yelling ‘God help me!’,” the man said.

After three days in detention, both men said, they heard al-Barghuti telling the guards that he was vomiting blood. GIS officers took him to the hospital for a few hours and then brought him back. “I saw him,” one of the witnesses said. “His feet and hands were black and blue. He was shivering and his eyes were rolled back. He was being held up by two guys.”

Following disclosure of al-Barghuti’s death, President Abbas called for the attorney general to conduct an investigation, but other government statements at the time asserted that al-Barghuti had not been abused in custody. On February 26, Minister of Information Riad al-Malki told the media that the government will “take all the necessary measures after the report of the [PLC] ad hoc committee,” but he explicitly denied that al-Barghuti’s death resulted from torture.⁸⁶ Other officials said that al-Barghuti suffered from a heart attack.⁸⁷

In addition to torture, West Bank security forces committed other violations of Palestinian and international law in their handling of the case. Al-Barghuti, as well as the other two men in custody at the same time, were not informed of the reasons for their arrest, allowed to see a lawyer, or brought before an investigative judge. Al-Barghuti also seems to have been denied prompt medical care.

The inability of human rights organizations to monitor detention facilities may have contributed to al-Barghuti’s death. On February 6, ICHR sent a fax to the head of the GIS’s legal department, Fawwaz Abu Zir, to request permission to visit GIS facilities across the West Bank. The letter specifically requested to visit the Ramallah facility on February 19, when al-Barghuti was being held there. On February 14, after ICHR again inquired, the GIS said they had never received the fax. On February 17, ICHR sent another request by hand but GIS never replied.⁸⁸

According to al-Barghuti’s brother Moufak, Israel had arrested Majid on five previous occasions, for suspected Hamas ties. Since June 2007, PA security officers had also summoned him twice for questioning.

On April 4, Human Rights Watch wrote to President Abbas and other top West Bank officials to express concern about the Majid al-Barghuti case, and to request that they implement the recommendations of the PLC ad hoc committee, including the issuance of clear instructions to all security services that they stop the use of torture in detention facilities and grant better access to detention facilities for PLC bodies and Palestinian NGOs. Human Rights Watch wrote to President Abbas’s office again on May 23, 2008, requesting information about the al-Barghuti investigation, but to date has received no replies.

A.W. in Nablus

In October 2007,⁸⁹ military intelligence officials summoned A.W., a student in Nablus, to their office in the al-Makhfiyya neighborhood of Nablus. He went. At first the officials treated him well, he said, but then they started to ask aggressively whether he had filmed images of his neighbor’s apartment which were shown on the Hamas affiliated al-Aqsa Television. One week before, PA security forces had tried to arrest the neighbor, who was not home at the time, and they damaged a lot of his furniture. A.W. explained:

Then they started maltreating me. They took me to a very small cell… and when my father came back to get me, they said I would be staying. My hands were tied behind my back and they put a sack on my head. They forced me to stand and they shouted if I sat. I stayed like that until iftar, and they didn’t let me pray until then.⁹⁰ Then they brought some food. I was surprised they were treating me like a criminal. They kept calling me a member of the Executive Force [tamfithiya]. They took me out for two hours and then they put me back in the cell.

Investigators from Jneid prison came. One was very tough. He made me take off my shoes. I was handcuffed to a chair. He raised my legs onto a metal table. He asked a guard to bring something to teach me how to be polite. He brought a soldiers belt and he started to beat me on the bottom of my feet. He saw it was not painful so he started hitting the top of my feet. The one hitting me told the guard that he’s not feeling the belt and we don’t want him going out and saying we don’t know how to interrogate people. The guard went out and got a stick. He started using it on the bottom of my feet…

During the interrogation they were asking about my affiliation to Hamas and student organizations. They wanted me to give the names of some people in Hamas. They asked about the newspaper Al-Haqinah, a Hamas paper. They said I work for it. They asked me who in Hamas had weapons. They asked my opinion about what’s happening in Gaza and if I was with or against Hamas. They asked about funding sources of the Islamic Bloc at the university.⁹¹

A.W. stayed in the custody of military intelligence for three days, and was then transferred to Jneid prison in Nablus, run by Preventive Security. When he got there, he said, he heard the screams of other detainees. About 80 other prisoners were in Jneid at the time, he estimated based on brief conversations with other detainees, most of them Hamas members from Nablus. A.W. spent 13 days there, with occasional beatings. He was held in solitary confinement in a cell about two meters by two meters. The cell had a strong light, he said, that never went out, and one small window.

“When I was there I saw the beating and torture of others and I felt I was not maltreated,” he said. In particular, he recalled seeing a detainee named Omar Darawsheh:

He was there 68 days, and he’s still there [as of October 22, 2007]. Once we thought he had died from the beating. They put a sack over his head and made him squat up and down. He said he had asthma but when he stopped [squatting] they beat him. We thought he died. He passed out for two hours and they lay him on a bed.

One day before Eid, the feast day marking the end of Ramadan, A.W. said, the guards told all of the prisoners to clean themselves and their cells. The next day Jneid received a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The prisoners were instructed not to tell the ICRC anything about their conditions, A.W. said.

A.W. was released in mid-October 2007, having lost eight kilograms.

B.D. in Nablus

On one evening in September 2007, around 7:30, a group of masked men who said they were from Preventive Security came to the home of B.D., a 29-year-old father of three in Nablus. He told Human Rights Watch that they took him to their headquarters in the Ta’awun neighborhood where they interrogated him about his involvement with Hamas. “They asked if I was Hamas? What is my status in Hamas? They said, ‘We know you’re a member of the Executive Force.’ I said it’s not true.”

B.D. said he was blindfolded and forced to stay in various stress position:

The shabah took various forms. I had to raise my hands with a leg over a chair and if I put my hands down they beat me. The made me crouch 500 times, which is called qurfusa. And I had to spread my legs apart and hold my arms out.⁹²

B.D. was given food and allowed to pray, and the next day he was taken to Jneid prison, where they asked the same questions about his relations to Hamas. “They used sticks and plastic pipes on my body, and sometimes they kicked me on my back,” he said. “It was two to three people at a time. My hands were cuffed behind me and tied to a door knob, while one guy pushed my head down. I was also hung from some pipes on the ceiling.”

The interrogations and abuse continued for 18 days, he said, followed by nine days without abuse. B.D. felt strong pain in his legs and asked for a doctor. A doctor came and said he should go to a hospital. Preventive Security officials refused, B.D. said, because he had too many signs of beatings on his body. “They said we can’t take you until these signs go away,” he said.

After 27 days in detention, B.D. said, he was granted a “temporary release.” The head of Preventive Security in Nablus, Akram Rjoub, came to him and made him sign two statements that he would not talk to the media or to any human rights group, he said, and that he would not be a member of any “enemy force” [tanthim mu’aadi]. He was released in mid-October. At no point during the man’s detention did he see a lawyer or an investigative judge.

According to B.D., his uncle is a member of Hamas. Preventive Security summoned his uncle for questioning in mid-October, and the family had not seen him since.

Teachers in Jenin

On the morning of September 17, 2007, five teachers were driving to work in a village outside Nablus when they were stopped by armed members of a security force who did not identify themselves. The unknown forces arrested all five teachers without a warrant and took them to Jneid prison in Nablus, run by Preventive Security, where they were apparently interrogated and beaten for about eight days, before being transferred to the military intelligence detention facility in Jenin. Human Rights Watch spoke separately and in private at the facility with two of the men after they had spent 29 days in Jenin, as well as with the brother of one of the detainees, who was visiting his brother. The brother, who said he witnessed the arrest, said about seven armed men in civilian clothes, some of them masked, stopped the teachers’ car as it approached the village of Talluza.⁹³ One of the arrested teachers explained what happened in Jneid when they arrived:

They used a stick and a belt. It started from the first moment I entered Jneid. I was handcuffed during the beating to prevent me from defending myself. They made me bend over with my hands behind my back. They took a rope over a pipe and they hung me from my arms, which were cuffed behind my back, until it was very painful. This was all while we were fasting during Ramadan. They poured cold water on us too. Twice they beat me on the bottom of my feet for about two hours and they asked me to jump while I was cuffed and hooded.⁹⁴

The interrogations continued for eight days, the teacher said, with questions about his relations to the Executive Force. The beatings took place about once a day and sometimes at night. “You were arrested because we don’t want to have a Gaza here,” the teacher said one of the interrogators told him.

After eight days, the teacher was transferred to the military intelligence detention facility in Jenin. He said the treatment at the facility was good, no beatings, although he had still not been brought before a judge. He saw a lawyer, he said, after about 20 days.

The teacher was hopeful that he would soon be released because he had signed a document stating that he would not take part in any banned organizations and would cooperate with the Palestinian Authority.

He had spent a few months in an Israeli prison earlier in the year, he said, because they accused him of membership in Hamas. “I’m very worried about getting arrested again by the Israelis,” he said. “I expect it because many people have had this experience.”

The second teacher interviewed by Human Rights Watch told a similar story about his arrest and treatment in Jneid. “I was beaten with a stick and slapped while in stress positions. They punched me in the face,” he said. “They asked about my military affiliation and my relationship to the Executive Force and where I kept my weapons. I was hung by a rope.”⁹⁵ He continued:

On the eighth day they forced me to strip from about five until the next day. I was only with [wearing] my briefs in a stress position and then [they] beat me severely with a hose for about two hours. You could see the marks. They left me like that from 5 p.m. until dawn. They also poured cold water on me while beating me.

The teacher, who also expected to be released soon, said he had spent two periods in Israeli prisons: for 35 days in 1996 and for 14 months starting in 1997. Both times he was accused of membership in Hamas.

Ashraf Othman Muhammad Bader in Hebron

On September 17, 2007, according to Ashraf Bader, Israeli authorities released him from prison after five-and-a-half years for affiliation with Hamas. Two months later he was detained by Preventive Security in Hebron and held for eight days, during which time he said he was beaten and ordered to confess his connections with Hamas.

According to Bader, Preventive Security summoned him to their office in Hebron on November 20. He met a person who identified himself as Abd al-Azim al-Atrash, who asked questions about Bader’s work and family, and then about his political activities: was he active in Hamas, did he give them money? After some time, other men joined the interrogation and started to beat him:

They started to hit me all over my body. They were shouting and swearing at me. They said I belong to Iran, to Hamas, to the Executive Force in Gaza, and they would do what’s necessary for a person like me.

They were punching and kicking me and they hit me with a chair. Then they took me to the bathroom. A man identified himself as Jihad Abu Omar, head of Preventive Security for Hebron city. He told me to take off my clothes and my socks and shoes. It was November and very cold. He asked for a man to come and beat me. Four to five men came with masks and they started to hit me all over. They put my leg on a chair and hit me with a belt and sticks on my legs and the bottom of my feet. I don’t know for how long. When they finished I couldn’t stand.⁹⁶

After the beating, Bader said, the officers carried him to an interrogation room, where they ordered him to confess. Then they took him to a small cell, about three meters square, which had a small window and was very cold. They tied his hands behind his back and put a bag over his head for some time. He stayed there for four days, he said, without the bag on his head but his hands were constantly tied, sometimes in front and sometimes in back. They untied him to eat and pray.

On the fourth day, according to Bader, he met a man from the legal department of Preventive Security. Bader related that he had been beaten and the man said he would file a report. After that, Bader was allowed to rest for some hours on a mattress in another cell. But he was then brought back to the cold cell, where officers told him that he had to confess or the interrogation would continue. He spent three more days in that cell, with a mattress brought in for the sixth and seventh days.

On the seventh day, there was a sudden change, and the officers said the arrest and the beatings had been a mistake, and Bader was free to go. They allowed him to leave. “I never saw a lawyer or a court,” Bader said.

On December 17, 2007, ICHR (then PICCR) sent a letter to Preventive Security in Hebron about Bader’s case. Preventive Security wrote a reply, signed by Jabril Bakri, then the deputy and currently head of the force, viewed by Human Rights Watch. It said:

When we invited Ashraf he attacked the person who met him and this is the only reason we detained him. When in interrogation, he refused to speak about anything or answer questions or even to respond to our greetings. Thus, he refused to cooperate with the interrogation completely. So this is the reason we had to apply the legal procedures.

As for the treatment inside the interrogation system, he was not subject to any kind of violence or torture. This is based on the daily examination and daily medical reports done every morning.

As this complaint of torture is not based on any medical report or testimony, this claim is denied.⁹⁷

The letter concluded that Preventive Security had the right to sue Bader for lying to ICHR.

About one month after his release from Preventive Security detention, Bader was detained by Israeli forces. They came to his home around 1:30 a.m., he said, and ordered him to meet with an official from the Israeli Security Agency, Shabak. At the meeting, the Israeli official started by saying: “How are you? We heard you were in a PA prison.” The Israeli wanted to know what Preventive Security had asked him and “What was better, Israeli or Palestinian jails?” After a short time, they let Bader go with a warning to “respect the law and behave.”

N.T. in Ramallah

In early September 2007, N.T. was walking from his store in the Ramallah industrial zone at around 2 p.m. when he noticed he was being followed by a car.⁹⁸ Two men in civilian clothes got out, he said, and told him they were from Preventive Security. They showed no identification, but they handed him a summons and said he had to report immediately to Preventive Security.

N.T. took a taxi to the Ramallah headquarters, where he was photographed and left to stand in the corridor until about 4 p.m. Finally someone came and, without introducing himself, began to ask questions about the man’s family and friends. “He asked if I knew why I was there,” N.T. recalled. “I said no, and he said, ‘Because you’re Hamas.’” N.T. said he was not a member of Hamas but that he did spend two periods of preventive detention in Israeli jails—three months in 2002 and one year in 2005—on suspicion of being a member of Hamas.

The interrogation continued on and off throughout the afternoon without violence but with some threats, he said. After a few hours, the interrogators forced him to stand in the hall for two hours with his hands in the air and one leg raised. After a break, during which time he refused to confess to being a member of Hamas, he spent another hour in the hall holding the stress position, although he was allowed to pray. After that, the interrogators sent him home, with orders to return the following morning at 9.

N.T. returned the next morning and waited until 4 p.m. Then the two men who had stopped him the previous day arrived. N.T. explained what happened over the next 15 to 20 minutes:

They threatened me and started to beat me. One of them was sitting in front of me and the other was behind the table. The one in front slapped my face and punched me in the stomach. A third guy came in, not in uniform, and he had a stick. It was wooden and he was hitting me on the back…. After the stick broke, he kicked me on the side. I started bleeding from my nose. They asked me to go wash. I went out and when I came back they said “you did this to yourself, why did you do it?”

The beating continued in the corridor for another 15 minutes, with the interrogators demanding that the man admit he was Hamas. “I fell but they told me to stand,” N.T. said. “I tried to defend myself but they ordered my hands down. The stick broke so he took the two pieces and started again.”

Around noon, N.T. saw someone in the station whom he knew. The man, whom N.T. did not want to identify, said he would try to solve the problem, and soon he was able to get N.T. out. He spent one night at the hospital and then went home.

“I did not want to make it a big deal,” N.T. said, when asked if he had tried to press charges or file a complaint. “I didn’t want them to come and arrest me again.”

M.S. in Nablus

On August 16, 2007, a single 26-year-old man, M.S., was working at his juice shop in Nablus when three armed men in civilian clothes arrived and told him to come with them. According to M.S., they said they were from Preventive Security. They took M.S. in a car to Preventive Security headquarters in the al-Ta’awun neighborhood. There he spent the next 12 days in custody, and another 24 days at Preventive Security headquarters in Ramallah. M.S. explained what happened on the day of his arrest:

As soon as we arrived they put a sack on my head and left me standing against a wall with my hands raised for about four to five hours. An interrogator took me to a room on the second floor and he removed the sack and started cursing and yelling at me: “Where’s your gun, you were shooting at Fatah members at the field near the municipality.” I said I was on the Hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca] at that time. He said: “You’re insulting me.” He slapped me and made me sit on a stool with my back on the ground [and my feet up]. Also with one leg on a chair and my hands in the air. This lasted for about two hours. He twisted my arm on the chair. He then took me out of the room with the sack on my head and my arms raised and he asked me to stand in the corner until about 9 p.m. Then they took me into a room and started beating me. There were two men in the room, the one who took me there and another. They beat me and put me in the stress positions. All the time they asked where my weapons were and what is my relationship to the Executive Force in Gaza. This went on for six days.⁹⁹

According to M.S., on the sixth day Preventive Security took him to court. The judge said he could have a lawyer but the security officer present refused. The judge extended his detention for another 24 hours, but he ended up staying in detention for another 30 days.

On the ninth day, Preventive Security took the man back to court. One hour before the hearing, the judge let him call a lawyer, the man said, but a security officer again refused. By coincidence, a lawyer was present at the court, and she agreed to take his case. The court session was postponed but the lawyer was able to visit M.S. on August 25.

On August 28, M.S. said, Preventive Security transferred him to its headquarters in Ramallah. There he was checked by a doctor and then handcuffed with a sack on his head until the next day. Over the next week he experienced sporadic beatings and periods when he was forced to hold stress positions, he said. No lawyer or family visits were allowed, although he was seen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. For 12 days, he said, he was held in solitary confinement, in a room with a mattress and small window.

M.S. denied being a member of Hamas. He said his neighbor had been in Hamas and, once while he was hiding from the Israelis in 2004, he took the neighbor’s son to see his father. He was arrested shortly thereafter and spent one year in an Israeli prison, he said, which may explain why Preventive Security considered him suspicious. “Six men were released with me [during this last arrest by Preventive Security] and four of them are now in an Israeli jail,” the man said. “I’m waiting for my turn.”

Ahmed Ismail Doleh

For three months in 2007, 44-year-old Hamas member Ahmed Doleh was Deputy Assistant Minister of Interior under the unity government, responsible for public and political affairs. Preventive Security forces arrested him on July 2 and held him for five months, mostly in solitary confinement, before releasing him on bail. Israeli forces arrested him 14 days later.

“My case is political rather than criminal,” he said when Human Rights Watch visited him at the Bituniya detention facility near Ramallah run by Preventive Security. “Because of Gaza they are doing this.”¹⁰⁰ Preventive Security chief al-Rih said Doleh was arrested for criminal rather than political reasons. According to Doleh’s lawyer, he was charged with organizing an armed group.¹⁰¹

According to Doleh, Preventive Security first held him in solitary confinement in Nablus’s Jneid prison for 50 days without access to a lawyer, in violation of Palestinian law. On August 26, they transferred him to Bituniya.

In Bituniya, Doleh was similarly held in solitary confinement. Human Rights Watch inspected his cell, which was slightly larger than the mattress that lay on the ground. It had no window, and Doleh said he was never allowed outside; he was escorted to the toilet next to his cell when required. The light was on constantly, he said. He was provided no newspapers, radio or books, except the Quran.

After about one month in Bituniya, Doleh said, he was forced to endure shabah on and off for about one week. He was tied by his wrists to a hook above his head and his feet on the ground for hours at a time, he said, with breaks only to eat and pray. During this time the interrogators told him: “If you have something to say then let us know.” They told him that he would be released if he talked to them about Hamas. One month later, Human Rights Watch observed light marks on both wrists, apparently from handcuffs.

The International Committee of the Red Cross visited Bituniya every 15 days, Doleh said.   He also got regular check-ups from a doctor and he said his health was good. During his detention, his family was allowed to visit once during Eid.

Doleh was released from Bituniya on December 2, 2007, after various judges had extended his detention five times. According to his lawyer, he appeared in court for the first time on August 30, which was 28 days beyond the limit stipulated by law.¹⁰² The judge extended his detention for 10 days. On September 9 and 23 he appeared in the same court, and had his detention extended for 15 days both times. On October 7 he was taken to the Court of First Instance, where a judge extended his detention for five days. He appeared before the same court on October 11, and got another 45 days extension. The lawyer was not allowed to visit Bituniya and only saw his client in court. To his lawyer’s knowledge, Doleh was released on bail without signing any confession or declaration. Israeli forces arrested him on December 16, 2007, apparently for membership in Hamas.

S.Z. in Bethlehem

On June 30, 2007, Preventive Security forces in Bethlehem arrested S.Z., a 30-year-old man with two sons. He spent the next 47 days in detention, during which time he said he was subjected to shabah for extended periods.

S.Z. told Human Rights Watch that he was walking home with his mother and two sons in the evening when two jeeps stopped and armed men forced him into one of the vehicles at gunpoint. At the Preventive Security headquarters in town officers put a sack over his head and handcuffs on his hands for two days. He refused to answer their questions about Hamas—“Where are your weapons?” “What is your connection to Gaza?” “Who is organizing the Executive Force in the West Bank?”—and was forced to stay in a corridor for three more days in a painful position with his hands tied to an iron bar, although he was untied to eat and pray.  At this point his started to feel sharp pain in his right shoulder. He was kept in various tied positions for six days, he said, as they accused him of being a member of the Executive Force.

During this time, the man had no visits from his lawyer, and the family came only once after 25 days. Towards the end of July he was taken to the Bethlehem magistrates court, where he met a lawyer hired by his family. In court he complained of being tortured. The judge ordered an investigation into the allegation, although it is not clear if an investigation ever took place, and extended his detention for another ten days.

A few days later, S.Z. was transferred to Bituniya near Ramallah, where he stayed for about ten days. During this time, he said, he was regularly in shabah:

In Bituniya my hands were tied behind my back the entire time, except when eating. I was chained with my hands behind my back in the corridor, and I ate only in my cell. Others were chained like me outside the cells…. If you don’t want to talk your body will talk, they said.¹⁰³

S.Z. described the different shabah positions he and the other prisoners endured:

1. Hands tied behind back and pulled up by a rope
2. Left arm and left leg up
3. Hands tied behind back, standing.
4. Legs spread legs and head down, hooded.

S.Z. spent 47 days in detention at Preventive Security facilities in Bethlehem and Ramallah in mid-2007, during which time he says he was forced to hold stress positions for extended periods.  Here he displays three of the common positions, known in Arabic as shabah. © 2007 Fred Abrahams/Human Rights Watch

S.Z. also drew a diagram of the Bituniya detention facility, which matched what Human Rights Watch had observed at the prison during the October 24 visit to see Ahmed Doleh (see above).

Preventive Security released S.Z. on August 15. At the time of Human Rights Watch’s interview with him, two months later, he complained that he still suffered pain in his right shoulder.

The man said he had twice been in Palestinian jails—in 1996 for one month and in 1998 for four months. He had spent time in Israeli jails twice too, he said—four years beginning in 1999 and two-and-a-half years beginning in 2003. S.Z.’s father was a Fatah member, he said, but his six brothers are all Hamas, and two of them were in Israeli prison as of October 2007. His father was killed in clashes with Israeli forces in 2001.