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Financed by the British taxpayer, brutal torturers of the West Bank

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers. An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK. The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

...Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) gave £76million in all to the PA last year for ‘security sector reform’ and fostering the rule of law.
About £3million goes directly to the PA police. Another £17million pays the salaries of the PA’s array of security organisations – including the Presidential Guard intelligence service and the feared Preventive Security Organisation.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

...Professor Raid Neuerat, who teaches political science at the West Bank’s Nablus University, told how PA security men handcuffed him at gunpoint in front of his wife and four children, pulled a thick, soiled hood over his head then bundled him into their car. It is a five-minute drive from his house to the local Jenaid prison – but it lasted four hours. ‘Most of that time they beat me,’ said Prof Neuerat, 39. ‘They were hitting my head and spine with their rifle butts. By the time I arrived I had lost my sight in both eyes and could not move my legs.’

...Most frightened victims did not want to be named. But they all gave similar descriptions of the brutality. One man of 29, a married teacher with a young child, said there are two categories of torture – ‘mini ’ and ‘maxi’. The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

...The Independent Commission on Human Rights, an official body established under Palestinian law, last month investigated 29 cases of torture. A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’ The DFID said it ‘utterly condemns any unlawful harm to or detention of people and is working with the human rights groups to ensure these allegations are fully investigated’.