In a letter to the Palestinian president made public today, Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern over the suspicious death in custody of Salim al-Akra. Mr. al-Akra died on February 27, days after Palestinian Military Intelligence Service (MIS) officers transferred him to hospital.
He reportedly had been under MIS interrogation since February 6, 2001, and several persons who saw his body have alleged that it bore signs of torture.
According to Human Rights Watch's information, Mr. al-Akra is the twenty-third Palestinian to die in suspicious circumstances while in Palestinian Authority custody since 1994. In the vast majority of these cases, no independent autopsies were performed to determine the cause of death, and the Palestinian Authority has not made public the results of its own investigations, nor pursued criminal prosecutions of those responsible.
"The Palestinian Authority has failed to establish the rule of law, and these suspicious deaths are the product of that failure," said Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "People responsible for wrongful deaths should be brought to justice."
Human Rights Watch called on President Arafat to order an immediate independent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. al-Akra's death, make the results of the inquiry public, and bring to justice those responsible for any abuses, as well as to take all necessary measures to end torture and other mistreatment in detention by officials of the Palestinian Authority and its agents, including stating publicly that the Palestinian Authority will not tolerate torture.
