Shin Bet, police severly tortured Palestinian suspects

[richards1052]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=865212">Shin Bet, police severly tortured Palestinian suspects

by Nir Hasson, Haaretz

In a harsh report released yesterday, the http://www.stoptorture.org.il/eng/press.asp?menu=6&submenu=1&item=307">Public Committee Against Torture in Israel accuses the Shin Bet security service and police of severely torturing Palestinian security suspects. The report includes the testimonies of nine Palestinians who were arrested by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet between 2004 and 2005, including one that charged police investigators with severe sexual abuse. The prisoners interviewed complain of beatings, painful sitting positions for long periods of time and being tied up painfully, among other things.

The report says the doctors at the hospitals and prisons ignore the prisoners' complaints or treat them with contempt, thus enabling the security services to continue torturing the prisoners.

A 24-year-old prisoner from Nablus testified that during questioning a police investigator held his legs in the air, and inserted an object into his rectum. "While the investigator inserted the 'object' into my rectum and removed it, he pulled my genitalia, as if he wanted to rip it out," he said. "He told me that he wanted to cut it off and throw it to the dog - this lasted at least 10 minutes. The whole time I yelled out in pain." This prisoner's examination by an Abu Kabir Forensics Institute doctor revealed signs of sexual abuse, the report says.

Another prisoner, Louay Ashkar, 27, of Saida village, said he sat during questioning on a chair with a bent back, both hands tied behind the chair and each leg tied to chair leg. "The interrogator Effi would push my chest backward until my head reached the floor, then grab my bound hands and pull me to him," said Ashkar. "I lost consciousness because of the pain, especially in my back." The report says Ashkar's legs are paralyzed due to the spinal damage caused by the torture.

...The Shin Bet responded that its methods were "legal" in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling. Article 2 of the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which Israel is a signatory, allows "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever," including a state of war or any emergency, as a justification of torture.

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Some help with the rules...

First, the title of the post and the article must be the same. Second, for fair use rights, we are only allowed to reproduce up to four paragraphs (sometimes, five). So, make those edits, and your post won't get locked. Check the rules at the top of the forum, as they are a little different than the rest of the site.

[richards1052]

2. 'Ticking Bomb' Justification is a Fraud

Since someone is bound to come along & reply to this post by saying that such torture actually prevents terrorism, I add this quotation from the press release published by the Public Committee Against Torture:

"The report challenges and refutes the “ticking bomb” scenario that forms the basis for the legal “the necessity defence,” which facilitates the use of torture following the High Court of Justice ruing of 1999. The testimonies that make up the core of this report, which are among the harshest cases to reach PCATI in the years 2004-2006, contradict the “ticking bomb” scenario. These testimonies illustrate the fact that any Palestinian detainee might find himself tortured during interrogation under the pretext that he is a “ticking bomb” and that today in Israel there is no effective legal control –and certainly not moral control – against of the use of torture."

Furthermore, intelligence analysts and other related professionals have come ever more strongly to the conclusion that techniques like those outlined above and also used by the CIA in Guantanamo and other detention facilities http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30interrogate.html?ex=1338177600&en=e62a5c59a14c0391&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">simply don't work:

"As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable...

In a blistering lecture delivered last month, a former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called “immoral” some interrogation tactics used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon.

But in meetings with intelligence officials and in a 325-page initial report completed in December, the researchers have pressed a more practical critique: there is little evidence, they say, that harsh methods produce the best intelligence.

“There’s an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply,” said Randy Borum, a psychologist at the University of South Florida who, like several of the study’s contributors, is a consultant for the Defense Department."

[pelsar]

3. the contradiction....

Furthermore, intelligence analysts and other related professionals have come ever more strongly to the conclusion that techniques like those outlined above and also used by the CIA in Guantanamo and other detention facilities simply don't work:

yet israeli intelliegence is pretty incredible when in comes to intercepting bombers.....blowing up cars caring "card carrying members of islamic jihad" etc...

that means one of two things:

either the shin bet doesnt use those methods outlined above.....or those methods work. I guess you get to choose which one you believe.

[richards1052]

4. That's of course ignoring the innocent civilians...

That it also ends up killing in all those "pretty incredible" operations otherwise mistakenly known as "targeted killings." Of the Gazans killed by the IDF in the past week's violence 33% were civilians & 13% children. Just today, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=865943">Haaretz announced that 2 Gaza children were killed while scrouning for scrap metal along the border fence. The IDF claims they were planting a bomb though I fail to see how an 11 yr old is physically or technically sophisticated enough to do so. Nor did the IDF produce the alleged "bomb" they were planting.

[pelsar]

6. you avoided the point....

either "torture" doesnt work as described above, as you seem to agree.......in which case you would then have to come to a different conclusion as to how the shin bet stop so many bombs.

listing the mistakes and those killed is easy...how about listing the number of kassams, pipe bombs, planners killed by raids and air strikes, kidnapped victims found?....and explain how the shin bet knew.

[richards1052]

8. The best way to stop the bombs

Is to negotiate a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas. No matter how excellent the Shin Bet's record (a pt of yours I do not concede for a minute) it cannot track down every terrorist & prevent every bombing. The only true solution is a peace agreement. And to get there Olmert or whoever comes after will finally have to bite the bullet & enter into final status talks.

And another pt. you missed is that these individuals who were tortured were not, acc. to the NGO, 'ticking bombs' nor did they have information on 'ticking bombs.' The pt. being that torture is used indiscriminately by the Shin Bet whether or not a prisoner has information of an imminent attack.

If you want an alternative system to the current torture model, you should read the 2 articles fr. the NYT, one of which I linked to above. They present a system of interrogation that is NOT based on torture, but which could elicit great amts of useful intelligence fr. detainees if implemented & executed properly.

[pelsar]

9. sheesh...

you made two assertions, or so i understood:

that the shin bet tortures and that info from torture victims is useless.

and yet israeli intelligence is considered to be some of the best.(too many bombs intercepted to ignore good intelligence and wonder how they knew)

_____

i guess that means they just torture for the "fun of it"....just want to clarify
___

btw why negotiate with abbas...seems to me hamas runs the govt?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. "Just for the fun of it" may not be as much of an overstatement as it should be.

I don't for a minute believe that torture "just for the fun of it" is a regular occurence in the Shin Bet (I suspect that certain members of the Shin Bet, and every other law enforcement agency in the world, do on occasion torture prisoners for fun, but until they can find something other than humans to employ that's pretty much inevitable).

I *do* think it very likely that Israeli security forces torture Palestinians on relatively light grounds - as I've said in other discussions, I think you probably overestimate the amount of concern many Israelis, and those in the security forces more than others, have for Palestinian human rights, and underestimate the prevalence of hatred for them.

And I think that torturing anyone, for any reason whatsoever, is completely unjustifiable, and that the Israeli government (and those, if any, Palestinian or Arab organisations that do so) should be unqualifiedly condemned for doing so.

[pelsar]

31. just to clarify...

think you probably overestimate the amount of concern many Israelis, and those in the security forces more than others, have for Palestinian human rights, and underestimate the prevalence of hatred for them.

i've mentioned it before...we dont care about the palestenains, nor do they care about us....its pretty mutual....at the sametime you wont find much hate for the palestenains either in israeli socity...you will find apathy

[richards1052]

32. Once again putting words in my mouth...

"you made two assertions, or so i understood:

that the shin bet tortures and that info from torture victims is useless."

Again, you understood incorrectly. This is the 2nd time I've requested you not put words in my mouth.

I never said that info fr. torture victims is useless. Often it has proven useless & I'd be happy to provide you multiple sources that confirm this (unfortunately Israeli intelligence doesn't discuss it's failures so you'll have to suffice w. examples of U.S. intelligence blunders). I am also certain that there are instances in which torture produces accurate intelligence.

I maintain torture is immoral as a good Bush political appointeee, Philip Zelikow wrote in the NYT article you appear not to have bothered to read. Info obtained through torture is notoriously unrealiable as torture victims are known to give their torturers the info they think the torturers want to hear. Finally, the NYT article makes clear that the WWII US military obtained stunningly good intelligence fr. German & Japanese prisoners of war using extremely sophisticated interrogation techniques & expert knowledge of the psychological & cultural profile of the detainees. They did all this w/o any torture at all. This is the basis on which the gov't Science Board, discussed in that article, is mapping out a proposal for a new type of U.S. interrogation.

[Solo_in_MD]

12. What makes you think that Abbas can control things?

Everything so far shows he can not control the rockets

[parkia00]

16. Just to clarify....

I'm guessing that you are in full support for the art of torture? Would be fine if every single person picked up for interrogation were actually terrorists. But you never really know can you? As for the IDF hitting their targets, they do that very well, so well in fact many times such attacks have a collateral bonus of taking out other Palestinians who had the unfortunate bad timing of being in the same area where the IDF decides to drop something. So both these are a slippery slope isn't it? How much collateral damage is acceptable to the IDF? A pair of civilians? A few? A little more? Or simply take pot luck? Anything to take out the target. It's easy to just call these civilian death as collateral. But each and every collateral has fathers, mothers, parents, siblings and people who love and care about them. How many innocent people is it acceptable to torture just so a criminal or terrorists would talk? These people are not just a comma, a number or a smudge. They are people. And to those that attempt to dehumanize others by ignoring what their actions have caused to others only dehumanize themselves. The terrorist that the IDF are fighting have already done that long ago. Should the IDF go down the same path?

[pelsar]

22. you guessed wrong...

I'm guessing that you are in full support for the art of torture?

i am for putting pressure on people who know about bombs, etc. Not torture in the classic sense of pulling out finger nails etc

How many innocent people is it acceptable to torture just so a criminal or terrorists would talk?....tough moral question of which i dont have a definitive answer for....

how about you?
how many innocent people should die in order for a known criminal or terrorist to be able to get 6 hours sleep and 3 square meals a day and not feel any pressure to talk?

those busses that blew and killed/maimed hundreds of people?....are their deaths acceptable to you if someone knew about the next one, refused to talk and no one pressure him to talk?...i believe those dead people from those busses were people too

[Donald Ian Rankin]

34. I'm afraid my answer is "as many as it takes".

While there may be specific situations in which an act of torture might do more good than harm, I don't trust any government or institution to decide which those are. The only torture policy which doesn't result in people being unacceptably tortured is to ban all torture under any circumstances, even if that does lead to people who could have been saved by information extracted under torture being killed.

[pelsar]

35. fair enough....

The only torture policy which doesn't result in people being unacceptably tortured is to ban all torture under any circumstances, even if that does lead to people who could have been saved by information extracted under torture being killed.

a tough call...but straight......

[breakaleg]

18. It is completely irrevelavant if it works or not. It's inhumane and we treat animals better, or at

least we should. I think everyone that supports torture ought to have to undergo the process themselves, see what they'd be willing to confess to, see exactly how it feels, and then stand by and watch another person go through it.

And quoting Guantanamo is a bit odd. You probably think it lends legitimacy to what Israel does. But over here, it's a considered a shameful blight on democracy to engage in such methods. It's not something anyone here is proud of.

[Lurking Dem]

20. Hey! I agree with you.

Had to happen eventually.

[azurnoir]

5. Do Shin-Bet and Mossad share intelligence? n/t

[pelsar]

7. i would assume so....n/t

[bemildred]

10. That is a non sequitur ...

IF it is true that israeli intelligence is pretty incredible at stopping suicide bombers, it may still also be true that torture is not the effective method, i.e. the claimed effectiveness of israeli intelligence may not be due to the use of torture, but some other means, and it may also be true that very little of the torturing they do is related to preventing such attacks. Since we are left to rely on press releases by the relevant agencies telling us about how effective they are, we really don't have much in the way of objective observation to tell us how effective they really are, or by what methods they manage it. Being intelligence agencies, they are in the business of lying.

It is true, in any case, that there are intelligence agencies on the planet that manage to be effective without using torture, and we think the better of them for it.

You also have to allow for the effect of the wall, which seems to have proved more useful than I thought it would, and of the Palestinian efforts to stop hostilities at times, which nobody ever seems to want to give them credit for.

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. this comment from the former Director of Shin Bet

snip:"Let me tell you why terror levels fell. It did not happen because of the Israeli Shin-Bet, I was the director most of the time and I can tell you that Avi Dichter who replaced me is a very good Director. From an operational point of view the Israeli Shin-Bet is doing a great job.

There are reasons other than the Shin Bet that terror levels fell. We analyzed these and found a very interesting correlation between three factors. The first was Palestinian public opinion, as it was measured by Doctor Khalil Shikaki. The second factor was the terror policy made by Hamas, and the third factor was the prevention and security policy of the Palestinian Authority. "

snip:"As we understood it then, when support for the peace process was high amongst the Palestinian street the Palestinian Authority made greater efforts to prevent terror and Hamas used terror less often.

Allow me to explain. We Israelis see Hamas as a terror organization and we are right. But we must understand that Hamas is not only a terrorist organization. It is also a way of life and a religious movement. Hamas has charities, they have municipal organizations, and they have financial organizations. Hamas will not fight against the will of the Palestinian street. They will not use terror when Palestinians do not approve of terrorism as a legitimate tool.

When Palestinians see progress in the political process (the peace process) they do not approve terror as a legitimate tool. This is why when the Palestinians felt like they were achieving freedom, less humiliation, and an improved economy they did not approve of Hamas or terror. For this reason the PA could fight against terror and Hamas without being perceived as Israeli collaborators. "

from: "My Vision of Peace
By Admiral (ret.) Ami Ayalon"

link to full article:

http://ameinu.net/perspectives/current_issues.php?articleid=28

.

[bemildred]

13. That's very interesting.

I'll have to pay more attention to Mr. Ayalon.

I do think it's interesting that it's the anti-semitic loons and the pro-Israeli loons that seem to be most impressed with the capabilities of the Israeli intelligence services. What little I can see out here in TV land doesn't impress me much.

What do you think about the effectiveness of the Wall? I was originally very skeptical that it would stop the attacks, and yet it seemed to lead to a reduction in the suicide bombings inside the green line. Do you think that was coincidence or did it have some effect (I mean aside from the issues about where it was sited).

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. The economic disruption and land confiscation that

the wall is causing, I believe will produce the negative results that Mr. Ayalon talks about.If they had built the wall on Israeli land...that would be a very different story.

Some things can have some short term effectiveness. But in the long run be counterproductive which is major part of the point Mr. Ayalon is making. So we have the former Director of Shin Bet arguing that only a political solution and economic viability will bring an end to terror.

Some things can have some effectiveness, but still be wrong. I have no doubt whatsoever that strict Sharia law in Saudi Arabia keeps street crime to a minimum. One can stand on the street corner in Al Khobar and count one hundred dollar bills in broad daylight without the slightest worry. But they don't even claim to be a liberal democracy. A liberal democracy does not practices such harsh punishments or engage in torture.

[bemildred]

15. LOL.

"One can stand on the street corner in Al Khobar and count one hundred dollar bills in broad daylight without the slightest worry."

Indeed, Sir. The question is whom is secure, and from what, isn't it?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. Doesn't use *just* the methods outlined above.

If Shin Bet's record is as good as you claim it to be (I don't know if it is or not) then that proves it must have at least one effective method of intelligence-gathering.

It isn't in any way evidence that it doesn't also try some that don't work well.

[pelsar]

23. intelligence has multiple means..

human intel is one, surveillance is another etc etc etc. I have no idea what the percentages are of what, nor do i have any idea of how much is torture vs pressure (i dont define sleep deprivation as torture). There are also other methods that are used: permissions to go to the hospital, universities etc...

none of them very "nice." There is no doubt in my mind that some work with some people other methods with others and there are probably very sadistic shin bet people who love to hurt people.

Whether or not one agrees with the methods is one thing, that can be a tough moral question (whos lives are more important-torture vs pressure?)....its effectiveness in stopping the bombs in israel is another, ....check the stats, the successful bombers in israel has dropped considerable, the attempts havent.

[pelsar]

24. d/p

[bemildred]

17. Gitmo: A fetid and cancerous symbol

Cross post from Editorials, seems relevant here too.

OCCASIONALLY, apparently unrelated episodes will align to reveal an important truth. So it is with three events reported in the last few weeks. The first happened sometime Wednesday, when another prisoner killed himself at Guantanamo Bay — the fourth suicide since the base opened. As is its wont, the military was tight-lipped, refusing to describe how the prisoner, who was Saudi Arabian, finally escaped from Cuba.

---

For people who have been following these issues, the findings were predictable: The aggressive interrogation techniques adopted by the administration after 9/11 are "outmoded, amateurish and unreliable," as the Times put it. They are a relic of a properly discarded past, abandoned not out of any moral compunction but because of "a more practical critique": There's no evidence they work. Dr. Randy Borum, a Defense Department consultant, noted: "There's an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply." But there is precious little evidence to back it up.

---

Dearlove understands what the president does not. Our policies have given terrorists precious tools to use against us. We have made potential recruits out of countless Arabs and Muslims. As our policies persist, their anger grows, intensifying into a defiant, and increasingly understandable, rage.

This explains why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates have called for the most enduring symbol of these policies — the prison at Guantanamo Bay — to be shuttered. They too understand what the president does not: The prison breeds terror. It stands as a fetid and cancerous symbol of hubris and hegemony, a threat not just to the U.S. but to our closest allies around the world.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-margulies2jun02,0,7281595.story?coll=la-opinion-center

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. Israeli officials could only site one single case where a bombing might have been prevented

when torture played a role

remember this is out of tens of thousands of reported cases of torture.

from: Interrogating Ourselves
By JOSEPH LELYVELD
Published: June 12, 2005


"In Israel, I was repeatedly told that coercive interrogation had effectively thwarted missions of would-be suicide bombers, saving lives. (I also heard that restrictions on the use of coercive interrogation had cost innocent lives in at least two cases.) But no one would describe a specific case. Weeks after I left Jerusalem, I finally received a communication from a high security source willing to get into particulars. The source made a sweeping claim that ''hundreds of terror attacks . . . intended to cause the deaths of an inestimable number of innocent civilians'' had been prevented by intelligence revealed in interrogations. The single example out of these hundreds that I was given turned out to be the same one that the Israeli Justice Ministry cited in a letter to Human Rights Watch a couple of months earlier. It was the case of Nasim Za'atari, a Jerusalem resident who scouted out potential targets for Hamas, then helped suicide bombers with their disguises and guided them to targets"

link, but since it is in the archives it will cost you $4.99 to access the full article unless you already subscribe to "Times Select":

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0E11FC395C0C718DDDAF0894DD404482

_________________

Amnesty International reports on the use of torture by Israeli officials:

link:

http://www.amnesty.org/results/is/eng

.

.

[pelsar]

26. the shin bet..nor the mossad

have a habit of talking much......but there are thousands of cases where specific cars were stopped and bombs found within....how they knew that is anybody's guess.....but they did

[Douglas Carpenter]

28. I would suspect that informants were the main source of such info.

Whatever I may personally think of informants, their use is within the legitimate range of what intelligence services all over the world are allowed by both international law and the accepted norms of a western democracy.

But even if one believed that torture may work on some occasions, are there not limits to what a society, particular one that considers itself an enlightened liberal society would permit?

Sharia law in Saudi Arabia really does work at stopping street crime. It is almost nonexistent within the Kingdom. Perhaps America or Israel for that matter could make their own streets a lot safer from petty thugs and thievery if we would just adopt the same tactics. But these are not the ways of nations that proclaim liberal and enlightened values.

I would also add the counterproductive component. With such a high percentage of Palestinians who have had family members subjected to extremely harsh and humiliating treatment by Israeli interrogators, this does nothing but breed hate. Approximately 25% of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been detained or imprisoned which means almost all Palestinians have family members and close friends in that category. I don't know exactly what percentage have been tortured. But Amnesty International puts the figure in the tens of thousands.

The use of torture is simply not a liberal value. And it legitimizes the use of cruelty by the other side of a conflict in the minds of their constituency.

[pelsar]

29. i really dont have an answer.....

The use of torture is simply not a liberal value. And it legitimizes the use of cruelty by the other side of a conflict in the minds of their constituency. where as i do agree that torture is simply cruel and has no place in a democracy....pressure does. Pressure can mean no family visits, kitchen/latrine duty, rumors that your bisexual......i would venture to say that those things arent torture. Sleep deprevation, taking away your blanket, no more hot drinks, having the air conditioner turned off, are also not torture...



a book to read:

Prisoners: A Muslim & A Jew Across the Middle East Divide

it might remove some of your generalizations

I would also add the counterproductive component. With such a high percentage of Palestinians who have had family members subjected to extremely harsh and humiliating treatment by Israeli interrogators, this does nothing but breed hate

[Douglas Carpenter]

30. I wouldn't want to generalize too much either

As I have said before, I hope everyone visits Palestine and meets real live Palestinians and talks with them as equals. And they will see for themselves that there are few people in the whole world more kindly hearted, forgiving and desiring of peace.

As far as using pressure is concerned, I'm sure pressure is used all the time all over the world in interrogation. But there is a very dangerous tendency for pressure to cross the line into genuine sadism especially when political pressure demands "results" and interrogators receive mixed messages from their superiors. Two books I have read on the subject of torture and abuse: Alfred W. McCoy's, "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Question-Torture-Interrogation-American-Project/dp/0805082484/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8701952-4352901?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180827942&sr=1-1) and "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbardo (Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/102-8701952-4352901?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Philip+Zimbardo&Go.x=13&Go.y=9)

Both authors extensively document how aggressive and degrading techniques can so easily get out of control and cross the line into what can only be called torture and abuse. Both researchers talk of how the interrogator who may be a an otherwise normal, moral and mentally healthy person frequently slips into the darker dungeons of their consciousness and becomes intoxicated and in some cases even addicted by this perverse theater of power. It is very dangerous territory for the interrogator and as well as those being interrogated.

_________

Nonetheless with almost every Palestinian in the territories having family members and close friends subjected to harsh and humiliating treatment if not themselves, I cannot see how torture cannot but be counterproductive along with being immoral and certainly most illiberal.

.

[richards1052]

33. Use this link to the Lelyveld article...it's free

"link, but since it is in the archives it will cost you $4.99 to access the full article unless you already subscribe to "Times Select:"

This one's free:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/11804

[Englander]

27. Secrets Of Unit 1391

Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares

By Dan Ephron
Newsweek

June 28 issue - Sometimes a country's darkest secrets have a way of surfacing in the most offhanded manner. Gad Kroizer, an Israeli historian, was researching old British police buildings when he stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect. The map showed the location of 62 police compounds built by the British in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arabs and Jews who agitated against Britain's occupation were interrogated. What caught Kroizer's eye was a camp called Meretz, which he had not seen on any contemporary Israeli map or read about in any modern writing on security compounds in the Jewish state. "There was a discrepancy between the map I had and the lists I'd been looking at," says Kroizer, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches at Bar-Ilan University. "I started putting two and two together."

What Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper (published in the March 2004 issue of Cathedra, circulation: 1,500) was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members—all Arabic speakers—are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. According to Arabs who've been imprisoned in 1391, some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as "moderate physical pressure."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5251751/site/newsweek/;