Interrogators with Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet brutally tortured three Palestinians whom the regime rounded up after a reported explosion, the Associated Press revealed. RNA - Their lawyers and relatives said the prisoners were tortured to the point of needing hospitalization, AP reported on Monday.
Shin Bet has identified the trio as the main suspects in an explosion that took place in the occupied West Bank last August. Tel Aviv claims the incident killed a 17-year-old Israeli female and wounded her father and brother.
One of the men was hospitalized with kidney failure and 11 broken ribs. Another was nearly unrecognizable to his wife when he was wheeled into a courtroom, and a third was stitched up after being attacked by a security dog, according to the report.
Last September, The Times of Israel reported that one of the detainees had been hospitalized in “critical condition”. He had been arrested earlier that month, but released due to a lack of evidence before being nabbed again, the paper wrote.
According to Israel’s Ha’aretz daily, Shin Bet was given “legal permission” to employ “extraordinary measures” against the suspect.
Tel Aviv regime already uses the “administrative detention” which enables it to arrest Palestinians without any charge.
Several other Palestinians swept up by the Israeli agency say they were threatened, beaten, forced into painful stress positions, and denied sleep, according to the AP.
The Public Committee Against Torture, an Israeli body, says more than 1,200 complaints have been filed against Shin Bet since 2001, without even one going to trial. Only one criminal investigation has been launched, over a 2017 case involving alleged rape, and it is still open.
The report revealing indications of the use of torture against the three detainees came as Palestinians in the occupied territories and the Gaza Strip are already enraged over a heavily pro-occupation plan outlined by the United States late last month.
US President Donald Trump unveiled the outlines of the plot in late January after withholding any details for years.
It featured annexation of the settlements that Israel has illegally built in the West Bank since occupying the Palestinian territory in 1967. The scheme also endorsed US recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds in the West Bank as Israel’s “capital”, although Palestinians want the holy occupied city’s Eastern part as the capital of their future state.
The plan, which has been rejected by all Palestinian sides as a treacherous scheme, has been inciting daily protests across the Palestinian territories ever since Trump’s announcement.
Most recently, Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas called for the formation of a united front against the plan, hailing “our compatriots in the West Bank and Jerusalem al-Quds” for their opposition to the scheme.