Prior to the Israeli Supreme Court's ruling in September 1999, the General Security Service (GSS) tortured hundreds of Palestinian detainees each year, particularly during their interrogation. The GSS interrogation process was not regulated in law but was conducted according to the recommendations of the Landau Commission, which was nominated to review the GSS's interrogation methods. Torture included, inter alia, binding in painful position for hours over consecutive days while covering the head of the interrogee with a wet, foul-smelling sack; beating; shaking; exposure to loud music; and isolation from the outside world. A number of NGOs such the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) petitioned the Supreme Court seeking to put end for torture.
In its ruling of September 1999, the Supreme Court prohibited the use of a number of methods of interrogation and torture and ruled that the GSS has no authority to use violent means of interrogation. Ten years after the Supreme Court's ruling, we spoke with Attorney Lea Tsemel, who represented some of the petitioners in this case.
Did the ruling indeed succeed in stopping torture in Israel?
There are several important aspects in the ruling. First of all, the court recognized the fact that there is torture in Israel. All of the arguments we had presented for years, about shaking, brutal binding, covering the head, sleep deprivation, seating detainees on low stools, hanging detainees in various methods, blaring music at high volume, incarceration in dark rooms, etc., were verified by the court.
The most important point in the ruling is the Supreme Court’s pronouncement that according to Israeli law it is prohibited to use torture in interrogations. On the other hand, the court permitted the torture of detainees based on the argument of “the necessity defense.” This means that the GSS can torture interrogatees if they are considered “ticking bombs”, that is, if the GSS believes that they constitute an immediate threat to public safety. Thus, in practice, the court left an option for torture. Still, in order to use this argument, the GSS interrogator must receive approval from his superiors.
When the Supreme Court ruling was delivered, all of the human rights organizations and activists in this field really celebrated. There was an atmosphere of victory, a festival, real satisfaction. Not every day does the court rule in this way.
How was the case conducted?
The case took ten years. In fact, the court merged many cases pertaining to torture into a single case. In my opinion, the trigger leading to this step was the repeated lies by the GSS interrogators and by the heads of the organization, which became increasingly sophisticated over the years. The court received numerous complaints from many sources, all describing the same kinds of torture. The GSS always found excuses for torture, which were presented via a well-oiled machine of despicable lies. These methods of operation frightened the court, set off warning lights. The GSS systematically, and almost scientifically, enhanced the torture. They came to the court with orderly tables that documented the type of torture, the duration of the torture and the signature of the torturer. All this horrified the justices and they felt obliged to set limits.
The organized doctrine of torture apparently relied on psychological consultation that explained which techniques were likely to affect the interrogatees more than others, to break their spirit and to lead them to confess, even sometimes to things they did not do. In my opinion, the GSS also received physiological consultation that the interrogators relied upon to know what methods of torture are liable to hurt more, how long they are permitted to continue with a particular method of torture, and when it becomes unbearable.
How is an interrogation conducted after this court ruling?
There is a difference between an interrogation of a detainee who is an Israeli citizen and an interrogation of a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories. A detainee who is a citizen is promptly brought before a judge. The police present the judge with the evidence that allegedly connects the detainee with the security-related activity, and the judges generally accede to the police request and extend the detainee’s remand by a considerable amount of time – in fact, by a long period of time. If the detainee is a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories, the interrogators have sufficient time. They have two weeks before they are even required to bring the detainees before a judge.
In both cases, the detainee signs a form that describes his rights. The form is important in order to provide protection for GSS personnel. If the interrogators do not provide the detainee with a description of his rights, his confession is liable to be excluded. The rights form and the summary of the interrogation together comprise a protocol document.
The interrogatees are fearful about carefully reading the form before they sign it, so that they will not be considered experts or not be seen as having undergone some sort of training. In most of the cases, the GSS do inform the detainees that they have the right to meet with an attorney. But the moment they ask to have an attorney represent them, the GSS issue an order preventing a meeting with an attorney. This leads to the complete isolation of the detainee.
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the GSS interrogators do not beat routine suspects. The suspects receive most of the blows during arrest and when they are led to the detention facility by the army or police. The interrogators engage in a lot of manipulation. They flood the interrogatees with a sea of information about their family, friends and neighbors, and also show them many pictures of their family and their home. Together with the pictures are hints that they will demolish the home.
The interrogatees sit on a regular chair, not on a small and low stool as in the past. They are tied to the chair and the interrogators have total control over them and their needs. The suspects are interrogated by many interrogators for long hours, until they erode the suspects’ endurance. The GSS make extensive use of a lie detector. If it is found that a person is not telling the truth, they confront him with this and interrogate him again. In practice, these are new and more sophisticated methods of torture.
If it is possible to claim that a particular person is a “ticking bomb,” the interrogators ask the higher echelons for approval to torture the detainee. The interrogators are liable for torture without an approval. But the approvals can be obtained with relative ease. I estimate that 10% of the detainees are defined as “ticking bombs” and the GSS receive approval to torture them based on the argument of “the necessity defense.”
When a person is arrested, the GSS has a lot of information about him. The information is collected from tapping telephone conversations, with the help of satellites and a large number of informants. Whatever the interrogatee says about other interrogatees is entered into their files. Each prisoner is up against a sophisticated GSS monster that controls an enormous amount of information about nearly everything.
The next stage is the use of “asafir.” This began to expand just prior to the court's ruling and gained great momentum afterwards.
What are “asafir?”
The asafir [Arabic: small birds] are stool pigeons within the prison. Usually, they are Arab men; some are employees of the GSS and some are prisoners or former prisoners who engage in this work in exchange for money or other benefits. Their job is to extract information from the interrogatees. They are trained in an extraordinary way. One could argue that the Palestinian national theater is being developed by the GSS in the jails. This is a real art. The detainees come to the asafir after many hours of interrogations, without sleep, and after long periods of isolation. Thus, they feel a great need to speak, to communicate with people. The asafir have reached such a level of sophistication that even a prisoner who does not confess to anything in an interrogation will end up confessing. Prisoners confess to things they did not do, that they never even thought of doing.
How does this work?
They know in advance which political organization the suspect belongs to. They present themselves as belonging to the same political organization. They have full information on the organization and the people within it. They talk as if they have lived their whole lives within this organization, so that the prisoner feels that they are really members of the organization. Then the asafir indicates that he suspects the detainee is a GSS collaborator. The detainee must prove that he is not a collaborator. Therefore, he tells all sorts of things including some things he has done and some things he has not done. The asafir records what he says and testifies against him in court.
Are the confessions extracted during a conversation with asafir considered admissible evidence in court?
The court claims that the use of asafir is legitimate, arguing that it is permissible to employ a ruse in investigations. Moreover, in a broad review of files in which the prosecution used recordings of asafir as evidence against suspects, one can see that the court regards such evidence as strong evidence.
Is there oversight on the granting of approvals for torture?
Not only is there no oversight, but the courts regard this with complacency. The judges feel that the GSS operate in an orderly way: They do not torture interrogatees without approvals.
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http://www.radioislam.org/historia/zionism/tsemel_torture.html
See H.C. 5100/94, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. The Government of Israel, 53(4) P.D. 817 (decision delivered on 6 September 1999).