ADALAH PRESS RELEASE
10 April 2011

On 4 -5 April 2011, Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR), and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza held a two-day expert workshop in Jerusalem. The workshop, funded by the European Union, focused on securing accountability for victims of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT).

Local Palestinian and Israeli NGOs participating in the expert workshop included the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI), B'Tselem, Addameer, Al Haq, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). Experts from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Avocats Sans Frontieres (ASF), UNICEF, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNOHCHR) also attended.

The primary objective of the workshop was to provide practitioners working on issues of torture and CIDT a forum in which to discuss their current challenges, lessons learnt, best practices, and advocacy efforts. The workshop focused on issues of torture and CIDT against Palestinian prisoners and civilians by Israel, and the international participants added to the discussion by presenting their comparative experiences and discussing their applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian context.

Professor Manfred Nowak, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), gave a keynote speech at the end of the first day. Prof. Nowak outlined his conclusions from his time as the UN Special Rapporteur from his country visits around the world, as well as some of the difficulties he faced in gaining access to prisons and other detention facilities. In his six years as UN Special Rapporteur, the only country in the Middle East and North Africa to grant him and his team access to prison and detention facilities was Jordan. Despite numerous requests, Israel never positively responded to Prof. Nowak's request for a country visit.

The second day of the conference closed with a keynote speech from Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist, a retired Brigadier General in the US Army Medical Corps, and an active member of Physicians for Human Rights-USA. Dr. Xenakis's speech focused on the duties and responsibilities of medical professionals in the context of interrogation. He also spoke of his personal experience as the psychiatric defense expert for Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee held at Guantanamo Bay for over eight years after being arrested by US forces in Afghanistan.

Jamil Dakwar, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program and a former senior attorney at Adalah, spoke about the ACLU's efforts over the last decade to secure accountability for acts of torture perpetrated and/or endorsed by the US military, with the support of political leaders and government legal advisors as part of the “War on Terror” during the Bush and Obama administrations.

One of the recurring themes addressed during the workshop was the definition of torture. Participants spoke of the “changing face of torture” in Israel, and many stated that the majority of cases they now encountered involved more extreme psychological methods of torture. Among the concerns raised by practitioners were that these methods essentially achieved the same ends via different means. Participants further concluded that new obstacles had arisen in obtaining evidence and proving cases of torture where physical harm was minimal, and where the torture was the consequence of cumulative harm, such as sleep deprivation, very poor conditions in holding cells, no access to counsel, medical treatment, or visits from family members for lengthy periods of time, as well as other means.

The conference also addressed the impact of torture beyond the direct victims. Practitioners spoke of the harm they have witnessed to the victims' families, as well as the long-term effects on soldiers or interrogators directly involved in the torture or ill-treatment, and the impact on society as a whole. In terms of next steps and advocacy efforts, participants spoke of educational campaigns for medical professionals to help them to better understand their obligations to record and report all suspected incidents of torture, as well as seeking legal remedies via criminal investigations, civil litigation, freedom of information requests, and mechanisms of regional and international justice.

Workshop Program

Photographs: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=215144801833811&aid=65440

See the interview with Dr. Xenakis in Ha'aretz:
In English: http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/first-do-no-harm-1.353473
In Hebrew: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=1223286

PROJECT FUNDED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION
JOINT PROJECT OF ADALAH, AL MEZAN (GAZA) AND PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-ISRAEL

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