Freed Palestinian prisoner recounts torture in Israeli jails

Mya Guarnieri Jaradat By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat November 3, 2011 | Edit

Mukhlis Burghal is one of the Palestinian prisoners who was exchanged for Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. His experience in Israeli jails points to the state’s disregard for prisoners’ human rights

Freed Palestinian prisoner recounts torture in Israeli jails

The Alternative Information Center has an in-depth interview with Mukhlis Burghal, one of the Palestinian prisoners who was freed in exchange for Gilad Schalit.

Speaking to an European journalist who goes by the nom de plume Mikaela Levin, Burghal, who spent 24 years in Israeli prisons for throwing a grenade at a bus full of Israeli soldiers, says,

[The] initial questioning is one of the most difficult moments… My head ended up with 14 stitches.

Like many Palestinian detainees, Burghal was beaten during interrogation.

In September of 1999, the Israeli High Court ruled that Israeli security forces could no longer “use physical means of interrogation that are not ‘reasonable and fair’ and that cause the detainee to suffer,” according to B’Tselem.

Human dignity,” remarked then-Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, “also includes the dignity of the suspect being interrogated.

Despite this ruling, Palestinian detainees continue to suffer from torture and mistreatment at the hands of security forces. Between 2001 and 2009, over 600 complaints were filed against General Security Services (GSS or Shabak) on behalf of Palestinian prisoners. None of the petitions were investigated, prompting the United Nations Committee Against Torture to publicly criticize Israel.

But it wasn’t just during interrogation–Burghal was also beaten during his prison sentence. Levin reports:

Halfway through his jail time, [Burghal] received another severe beating that resulted in 16 stitches in his head, a punctured lung, a broken rib, and a dislocated jaw.

‘The torture keeps changing: beatings, isolation, tear gas, suspension of family visits,’ he recalls.

In June 2011, Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHR-Israel), Adalah, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights released a report expressing their concern about the use of solitary confinement–or isolation, as Burghal called it–in Israeli prisons.

[S]olitary confinement,,, constitutes a grave violation of [prisoners’] constitutional rights to personal liberty, bodily integrity, and dignity. Serving a sentence in such conditions is cruel, inhuman[e], and degrading.”

Isolation, the report stated, can result in “severe mental damage… including: sleep disorders, depression and anxiety, psychotic disorders…, paranoia, disorientation in time and space, and severe confusion…

The organizations added that “solitary confinement may also cause physiological manifestations as a result of the stress…”

Last month, approximately 2000 Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike to protest the conditions of Israeli jails.

UPDATE: According to Haaretz, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and PHR-Israel will release a report this month detailing Israeli physicians’ complicity in the torture of Palestinian prisoners. The report includes evidence suggesting that, “many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; allow Shin Bet security service interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”

Speaking to +972, Louis Frankenthaler of PCATI remarks that the number of complaints of torture filed by Palestinian prisoners now stands at 750. To date, the state has not investigated any of these cases.

Mya Guarnieri Jaradat

Mya Guarnieri Jaradat is a writer and independent journalist based in South Florida after almost a decade in Israel/Palestine. Her book, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel's New Others (Pluto Press) was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. Her reportage and commentary has been published in The Nation, The NY Times, Haaretz, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian and many other outlets. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Slate, Guernica, the Jewish Quarterly, Narrative, and The Kenyon Review. She is currently working on a memoir.

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