Text courtesy of our United Against Torture colleagues, IRCT
The West Bank of Palestine has been under military occupation by Israel since 1967. But since the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority (PA), based in Ramallah, also deploys its own security forces.
Suha Jabara, who is a Palestinian, US and Panamanian citizen, was arrested by the PA on suspicion of spying, and taken to its West Bank detention centre in Ariha. “There were insults, beatings, threats. They threatened they could take my children away and have ‘fun’ with my mother and sisters. I felt like I wasn’t human from the way they treated me,” said Jabara. “I watched the young men being arrested and tortured, so I knew what they will do to me.”
Jabara, who has a heart condition and was hospitalised three times during her detention, said she was beaten, forced to strip, threatened with rape and put in solitary confinement. Her request to be examined for evidence of torture and other ill-treatment was refused, according to Amnesty International.
In 2021, Palestine’s Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) said it received 252 complaints of torture and ill-treatment against PA authorities in the West Bank and 193 against Hamas authorities in Gaza, a grim reminder that torture of Palestinians is not exclusively the practice of Israel.
In 2022, The UN Committee Against Torture, reviewing Palestine for the first time, urged authorities to end impunity for allegations of widespread torture and other ill-treatment and allow for independent monitoring of its prisons. In the same year, Human Rights Watch reported that the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza were systematically mistreating and torturing Palestinians in detention, including critics and opponents, in what it said, “may amount to crimes against humanity, given its systematic nature over many years.”
Article 11 of the UN Convention Against Torture, the 40th anniversary of which the United Against Torture Consortium (UATC) is marking, mandates States Parties to, “keep under systematic review interrogation rules, instructions, methods and practices as well as arrangements for the custody and treatment of persons subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment in any territory under its jurisdiction, with a view to preventing any cases of torture.”
After 70 days in custody, Jabara was released and was referred to TRC Palestine, a member of the UATC’s International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT).
“When I started at TRC I was not in a good mental state. My religious faith had been shaken,” said Jabara. “You no longer trust anyone and everything is broken. TRC helped me to get up again, and to feel safe. I was able to get married and to go on with my life and with my children, helping them with their education […] Now, four years later, I can face the people who hurt me, including the interrogator, and the person who hit me, without feeling afraid.”
To watch Suha Jabara’s full length interview click here: https://youtu.be/oy01GIH8rAI?si=93kWrTaIVPctYbv1
And to learn more about TRC Palestine’s support to survivors of torture and other ill-treatment watch here: https://youtu.be/E3jL6-C67VU?si=IqfAwwE-5Te1B-C5