Denmark should reject Israel's nomination of Carmi Gillon, former chief of that
country's main security service, to be the new Israeli ambassador in Copenhagen, Human Rights Watch said today.
"Diplomatic service should not be the source of job and travel opportunities for persons responsible for committing or sanctioning torture," said Lotte Leicht, director of Human Rights Watch's Brussels office. "Welcoming Gillon to Copenhagen will make a mockery of the guidelines on policy towards torture in other countries that the E.U. adopted in April."
Denmark had accepted Gillon's credentials several weeks ago, and he was due to take up his post in September. In recent interviews with the Danish media, he spoke approvingly of the use by the GSS of violent shaking, prolonged position abuse, and other practices that were outlawed in a September 1999 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court, and suggested that Israel should enact legislation to authorize those practices. He also stated that he was himself directly involved in about one hundred such cases.
Human Rights Watch also wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urging him to withdraw Gillon's nomination and investigate Gillon's role in GSS use of torture and ill-treatment during interrogations.
The letters to Foreign Minister Lykketoft and Prime Minister Sharon cited documented evidence of torture and ill-treatment of detainees during the 1993-1996 period, when Gillon was chief of the GSS Headquarters Branch and then of the entire organization.
"Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Denmark has the discretion to revoke its accreditation of Gillon," Leicht said. "Denmark also needs to review the procedures that allowed this abuse of diplomatic privilege to occur, and the European Union should support Denmark fully in this matter."
Human Rights Watch has previously opposed diplomatic postings of persons linked to human rights abuses, including a former Guatemalan vice-president proposed as a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a Chilean military officer named to head a United Nations peacekeeping operation, and a Honduran officer responsible for death squad activities before being assigned to that country's U.N. mission in New York.
Copies of the letters Foreign Minister Lykketoft and Prime Minister Sharon can be found on the internet at the following URLs:
