Tampa Bay Times · St. Petersburg, Florida · 10 November 1977

CP-1977-003

U.N. report says Israel tortures Arab prisoners

R. M. Sorge, United Press International, United Nations

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Transcribed from the clipping

“UNITED NATIONS — Israel frequently tortures Arab prisoners with hypnosis, electric shocks and having ‘their manliness mocked’ by Israeli women soldiers, a special U.N. report charges. The lengthy report released Tuesday by the U.N.

Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices drew a bitter denial from Israel, which termed it ‘biased, false and one-sided.’

Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog said the report was based on hearsay and unsubstantiated evidence and charged the committee was, ‘like all other U.N. committees dealing with Israel, no more than a tool in the hands of Arab propagandists in their unremitting war against the Jewish state.’

The report by the three-member committee said Israeli security agents make ‘frequent use of torture’ when interrogating Arab prisoners suspected of belonging to Palestinian guerrilla groups. Most of the charges were based on testimony by Mrs.

Lea Tsemel, a defense lawyer for Arab prisoners, and reporters from the Sunday Times of London, which published a series of investigative articles on the alleged torture of Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

But the three members of the U.N. committee — Sri Lanka, Senegal and Yugoslavia — also cited International Red Cross reports of severe overcrowding in Israeli jails and Israeli press reports to back up many of the allegations.

According to one report, published last summer by the Jerusalem Post magazine, Arab prisoners were sometimes ‘stripped (to) have their manliness mocked by a girl soldier to make them feel small.’

The report said that Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigations and seconded an International Red Cross recommendation that an international commission of inquiry compose of neutral states be established to look further into the matter.”

Context added by this archive

The charge and the denial in the same column, and the news agency names its sources: an Israeli defense lawyer, the Sunday Times of London, the Red Cross and the Jerusalem Post. “Compose of” is the paper’s.

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