In other words, the abduction and torture of Lebanese Shi’a (who are all considered members of Hezbollah) has received the imprimatur of the highest religious authority in Israel. How these people sleep at night is a mystery.

During the last occupation of southern Lebanon, Israel used the Khiam prison to warehouse and torture Lebanese, a direct violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, an agreement Israel is party to.

“Since the facility opened in 1985, hundreds of Lebanese have been arbitrarily detained in Khiam without charge for indefinite periods of time. Many of the detainees, including women, have been tortured during interrogation and subjected to abysmal conditions of confinement,” reported Human Rights Watch in 1999, a year before Hezbollah kicked the IOF out of Lebanon.

No doubt Israel’s new “detention facility” will mirror the torture chambers at Khiam.

“The prisoners’ testimonies and the cells bear witness to what went on inside,” explains Arjan El Fassed, writing for Electronic Intifada. “Prisoners were crammed into tiny, filthy spaces where they ate and slept. Those not in solitary confinement were allowed out once a week for 15 to 30 minutes in the ’sun room’ and open space surrounded by walls.”

Prisoners have been routinely tortured, three times a day. Torture included beatings, being prodded with electrical cables in sensitive parts of the body and being hung from painful positions….

Detainees were given inadequate food rations and beaten when they prayed until a riot in 1989, during which two prisoners, Bilal al-Salman and Ibrahim Abu ‘Azz, were killed….

Among the prisoners were Lebanese journalist Cosette Ibrahim, kidnapped while reporting in southern Lebanon. Some of the detainees were children, like 15-year-old Ali Tawbeh, who with his parents was dragged from his home by the Israeli occupation forces in 1997. Other hostages, like Abdeh Malkani, were over seventy years old. Hussein Awada, 65 years old, had been detained since June 1999. He had serious heart problems and could only move with the help of a stick….

Between 1987 and 1995 prisoners in Khiam were not allowed access to their families. They were denied the right of prompt judicial review of the lawfulness of their detention. A number of detainees have died in Khiam, some of them after torture, others because of lack of medical treatment. Other prisoners have been released after years of torture and incommunicado detention with serious physical or mental illnesses.

In regard to the journalist Cosette Ibrahim, the Center for Media Freedom wrote: “On 2 September 1999, during a sweep in Rmeish, a village located near the Israeli-occupied South Lebanon zone, the South Lebanese Army (SLA) arrested Cosette while she was visiting her parents. She was arrested with her brother-in-law, De Gaulle Abu Tass, and another man, Samir Khiam. No official reason was given for the arrest. Reports by Lebanese human rights groups indicate that Cosette was arrested for refusing to collaborate with the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army of General Antoine Lahad. Other reports attest that Cosette was arrested for her articles attacking the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon…. Cosette … has not been given a trial [and] may be held hostage for the purpose of negotiations with Hizbullah. This is illegal under Section 34 of the Fourth Geneva Convention ratified by Israel.”

But then Israel and the United States don’t do the Geneva Conventions.

“The detention center will be based on the model of previous prisons built in Israel such as Ktziot in the south and the Ofer base in Jerusalem,” Ynet continues. “During the Lebanon War, thousands of Lebanese detainees were incarcerated at the al-Hiyam [Khiam] prison located in Lebanese territory. Defense officials explained to Ynet that setting up a detention center on such a scale is proof of the Israeli government’s plans for an extensive operation that may last for months.”

In 2002, a Palestinian named Abed Khalil told the Inter Press Service Newswire about his stay in the Ketziot prison:

Ketziot was a prison in the middle of the desert. It was in southern Israel, toward the Egyptian border. No one could get there. Visitors were not allowed. Not even lawyers could go there because the prisoners were called administrative detainees, which means they were held without a trial and without being charged.

The soldiers used bulldozers to push the dunes up like mountains around it. The sun there felt like someone was pouring fire on you. It was a place with no buildings, only tents with cells.

I was 14 when they sent me to Ketziot. They put me there during the first intifada for 6 months because I threw stones at the soldiers who came into our camp. I don’t think you can dream a worse nightmare.

The floors of the cells at Ketziot did not sit on concrete but directly on the desert. At night when you slept, the scorpions and black snakes came in through the sand. There were no lights so you could not watch to kill them. The cell was small so you could not move away from them.

If you did not give information about people in your camp, the soldiers beat you. If you did give information, they said it proved you were a terrorist, so they kept you longer. And they beat you.

In testimony provided to Al-Haq (part of the Executive Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network), Ofer prison was described as follows:

This prison is located in Betounya just a few kilometers to the West of Ramallah. It is originally a military camp at which a detention center has been formed. It is estimated that 720 Palestinian detainees are held in this prison. Eighty-five of them are administrative detainees. Several others are Palestinians holding Jordanian passports.

Conditions in this prison are not better than those in Ansar 3 [Ketziot]. Prisoners are held in tents distributed on sections. Many harsh beatings have been reported in this prison. Overcrowding, poor food, terrible sanitation services, widespread insects and reptiles are common features of this prison. Prisoners are also in need of changes of clothes, especially underwear.

Additionally, there are some sick prisoners in this prison. These prisoners are deprived of medical care. In an affidavit given by detainee Murad Abu Gharbeyyeh he mentioned that he suffered from psychological instability after his wife had been killed in front of him. He lost his conscious many times. The doctor of the prison diagnosed his case, but he was not given appropriate treatment.

In short, Israel plans to invade southern Lebanon again, kidnap Lebanese, and feed them into an illegal detention and torture system based on the notorious Khiam prison and torture camps where Palestinians are imprisoned for resisting the occupation.

In Israel, with racist and sociopathic Zionists at the helm, it will be business as usual in regard to the Lebanese people, who are considered little more than untermenschen.

________________________

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