EXPOSED: Torture, hunger in Israeli-run prison in South Lebanon
The electrocution of a female detainee, the interrogation of women by two men, hunger, denial of medical care and indefinite detention without a trial: This week, for the first time, the Shin Bet security service revealed archival documents that illustrate the harsh conditions suffered by Arab prisoners at a jail built by Israel in Lebanon, which operated until the withdrawal in 2000.
A number of human rights activists had submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice via human rights lawyer Itay Mack to order the Shin Bet to declassify the documents. The materials, the activists say, record “torture and cruel and inhumane punishments” in the prison.
“Together with the South Lebanon Army, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet ran a detention and torture facility like those in the military dictatorships in Latin America,” Mack told Haaretz.
“The torture inflicted in Khiam Prison is a crime against humanity,” Mack said. “The documents that were revealed due to the petition are shocking, and constitute only a miniscule glimpse into the hell that they ran there. We will continue to fight until all the documents are made available to the public and those responsible for the horrors are brought to justice.”
Khiam Prison was built in 1985 near the eponymous village, which is located in South Lebanon, a few kilometers north of the Israeli border. Three years earlier, at the end of the First Lebanon War, Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon, but the IDF remained to operate in the “security zone” established in the country’s south, where the prison was built.
The first of the legal proceedings to uncover the documents will take place in early April, but the Shin Bet permitted publication of part of the material this week. A substantial portion of the documents that were revealed are still censored, so that large sections of them cannot be read.
One of the documents, a 1987 report entitled “The Khiam facility – a situation assessment,” is still censored for the most part. From the little that could be published we learn that the Shin Bet claimed that the prison “played a significant part in prevention activity” and that it was operated by SLA interrogators trained by the IDF and the Shin Bet.”
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Under the heading “Miscellaneous,” that same document reports that “No confessions are taken from those interrogated at this facility, they are not prosecuted, there is no detention order against them and the period of their detention depends on the severity of their deeds, without any determination of the length of their prison stay.” Which is to say, the detainees stay there for an indefinite period without any legal proceeding being conducted against them, in contravention of international law.
Another document, which is handwritten and does not include information about the writer or their position, concerns a detainee who was interrogated on suspicion of being “connected to Hezbollah,” and who “received electricity in her fingers” – in other words, she was tortured during the interrogation.
Another document, under the heading “Interrogation of women,” reported that “The interrogation of a female is conducted by a senior investigator with a policewoman present during the course of the interrogation.” However, “In the event that there is no military policewoman available, the interrogator will receive special permission to question the woman, with the senior investigator interrogating her while another investigator is present in the room.” Meaning that she would be questioned in the presence of two men. Additional documents indicate that there were dozens of women among the detainees.
Another document, which was written in 1988, testifies to the hunger from which the prisoners suffered in the jail. “This morning, the manager of the local prison reported that yesterday a hunger strike erupted in the prison due to a shortage of food,” it says. The sender and the addressee of the letter are censored.
“According to the director of the prison, there really is a shortage of food … at present food is supplied to 240 detainees, while the number of prisoners is 260,” it explained. According to another document, written in the same year: “The prison is very crowded and recently there was even a one-day hunger strike due to a shortage of food!!!”
Another document, from 1997, discussed medical problems from which the detainees suffered. The writer, whose name and position are censored, gives a report of a meeting he held with someone whose name and position are also censored, apparently someone in charge on behalf of the SLA. During the meeting, “he expressed to me his dissatisfaction with the solution of medical problems for the people being interrogated/prisoners, and with the fact that because we are flooded with medical problems, we postpone decisions about releases.”
The document mentions “An issue of medical responsibility, which is not clearly and specifically defined.” This leads to there being detainees “whose health is in danger” without the person in charge “being aware of that and without his receiving sufficient support from us to release them.” The document indicates that a doctor comes to the prison only once a week “or by specific invitation.” It also notes that in exceptional cases, the Shin Bet made sure to bring an Israeli doctor to the prison, “in order to receive a ‘blue and white’ medical diagnosis in cases that are sensitive for us.”
In summary, the document says that this is “a painful problem” and that the source who warned about it feels “that he has no support in the event that a detainee dies in prison due to medical problems or a failure to administer treatment recommended by the doctor.” According to Amnesty International documents, during the prison’s 15 years of operation, 11 detainees died there. Official IDF or Shin Bet statistics on the subject have not been published. According to the last paragraph in the document, the Shin Bet “must make decisions that will reduce responsibility, both ours and those of [redacted] regarding keeping the detainees in prison.”
In another document, also from 1997, a source whose name and position are censored wrote that “The medical problems … have been known throughout the years.” Among other things, says that same source, some of them stem from “all sorts…of attempts to be released from prison.” He says that “We should recall that not every health problem is critical and requires the release [of the prisoner], and sick people can be held in prison too.” The document also says that “The final decision must always be that of our forces,” because the Lebanese “have known interests, which are not always consistent with our interests.”
According to the documents, between 250 and 300 detainees were held in the prison at any given time. They belonged to various organizations and political parties, including Amal, Hezbollah, the Communist Party, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Others belonged to other organizations described as “unclear.”
The documents also reveal conversations held by various Israeli governmental organizations, which dealt with the legality of Israel’s interrogations of Lebanese detainees on Lebanese territory. According to one 1996 document, Israel recognized the “diplomatic/legal problem” of the existence of a detention and interrogations facility run by Israel in Lebanon. The document says that at a time “when the Israeli government has formally declared that it is withdrawing from the region,” establishing such a detention facility is “an act that is a clearly governmental.”
The discussion of this subject took place after the Shin Bet requested that the government permit it to interrogate Lebanese detainees in Lebanon, because of what it described as a deterioration in the security situation and the need “to elicit, efficiently and professionally, the intelligence that is likely to prevent some of the attacks and to spare the lives of IDF and SLA soldiers.” According to the document, then-Military Advocate General Uri Shoham emphasized that the proposal to enable the Shin Bet to interrogate detainees in Lebanon “is not free of the main problem – the responsibility that Israel is taking upon itself simply by conducting an investigation by Israeli organizations.”
Another document, which is undated, reports that the legal advisor – apparently the advisor to the Shin Bet, his full title is censored – “surveyed the legal situation, according to which the activity in Lebanon is not established in law, and even less so from the aspect of international law and from the public aspect.” Another source is quoted as saying “The tests we can expect are conditional on judicial review on the one hand and public criticism on the other,” and recommended: “The less we do, and the more careful we are about the cases that we handle, and the more the work is carried out in conditions identical to those with which we work in Israel, the less the danger of getting into trouble.”
Another document, from 1997, reports that Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein “approved in principle the joint proposal of the Shin Bet and the IDF to enable the Shin Bet, under certain conditions and restrictions, to interrogate Lebanese people in Lebanon.”
In 1999 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual submitted a petition to the High Court demanding the release of a number of detainees from Khiam Prison and the opportunity for lawyers on behalf of the organization to meet with those imprisoned there. The petitioners claimed that the Shin Bet was involved in every aspect of the prison’s operations, but as attorney Dan Yakir, the ACRI’s legal adviser, recalled this week, “The High Court avoided discussing the petition, and sought an increasing number of arguments on the question of its authority to intervene in what was happening outside the country’s borders.”
Dan Halutz, the head of the IDF Operations Directorate and later the Chief of Staff, submitted an affidavit to the High Court in which he claimed that there was no basis for the complaints of Israeli involvement in running the prison. He did confirm that IDF soldiers and other Israelis were posted in the prison, but claimed that “They aren’t there on a routine basis.”
“The documents revealed now by the Shin Bet prove how deeply the Shin Bet was involved in all aspects of running the prison,” says Yakir. “The Shin Bet was aware of the inhumane conditions in which detainees were held, and of the shortage of food; the Shin Bet was aware of the torture endured by the detainees during the interrogations and conducted some of the interrogations itself.”
Yakir added, “On the one hand the Shin Bet didn’t want to rely on the medical opinion of a Lebanese doctor, so that there wouldn’t ostensibly be an easy way to release detainees from the prison, and on the other hand, it refused to send an Israeli doctor, in an attempt to avoid responsibility for what was happening in the prison.”
He says that the documents indicate that “The IDF in general and the Shin Bet in particular were involved up to their necks in ruling the civilian population in South Lebanon and in the illegal imprisonment of hundreds of detainees for an unlimited time without any legal basis, without judicial review and in cruel conditions that included torture.”
Dalia Kerstein, the former executive director of Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual and one of the petitioners, said that “The cruel occupation regime conducted by Israel in South Lebanon, including the terrible torture in Khiam Prison, is one of the black stains on Israeli history.” She added, “The departure from Lebanon will not be complete until the State of Israel reveals all its deeds there, and until Israeli society deals with its past there. While the prison itself has become a museum, the documents about Israel’s acts there continue to be concealed from the public and those responsible for the horrors continue to live among us, without being called to account for their deeds.”