UNRWA accuses Israel of detaining, coercing staffers into false confessions about ties to Hamas

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Monday accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas.

“Some of our staff have conveyed to UNRWA teams that they were forced to (make) confessions under torture and ill-treatment. These false confessions were in response to questioning about relations between UNRWA and Hamas and involvement in the 7 October attack against Israel,” UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said in a statement.

Israel has accused at least 12 staffers from the UN Relief and Works Agency of being involved in the October 7 terrorist attacks and has alleged that about 12% of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers are members of Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups. Israeli officials have said some of the information about the 12 staffers involved in October 7 was obtained through cell phone data and other sources. UNRWA says it has fired 10 of the 12 accused staffers and that the other two are dead. CNN cannot confirm the allegations.

GrymEdm,

Israel has been using these types of techniques on captives (Israeli and otherwise) to gain coerced confessions for a long time now.

In 2014, Australian journalists produced a documentary called Stone Cold Justice: Israel’s torture of Palestinian children. An excerpt from the description: A film which has been produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv’s use of torture against Palestinian children. The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists.

gAlienLifeform,
@gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world avatar

Archived at web.archive.org/web/20240304195938/…/index.html

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Could you edit your link to include some lines of the article in the body and place your archive link here in the comments? Mods are strict on the rules

gAlienLifeform,
@gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world avatar

Didn’t realize that could be an issue, but I should be able to do that

Thanks for the heads up

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Nice.

This article reminds me of when the IDF kidnapped staff members and even directors of hospitals and tortured them into confessing that their hospital was a “Hamas base”

It took even longer for the families, friends, and colleagues of Mohammed Al-Ran, a general surgeon at Kamal Adwan Hospital, to see him again. The physician was forcibly disappeared by the IOF and tortured for 46 days. He was recently released, naked, at the Karem Abu Salem crossing.

The surgeon originally chose to stay back at the hospital with a handful of other health staff and patients as the complex was evacuated. Then, the IOF threatened that they would bomb and destroy the whole hospital if Al-Ran did not surrender to them, recounted Bilal Azzam, a member of the Jordanian Medical Syndicate, during a first round of discussions on the rebuilding of the health system in Gaza.

He shared detention with other kidnapped Palestinian health workers, including Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital. Of Abu Salmiya, Azzam said the IOF broke both of his hands and forced him to walk on all fours. “They put a chain around his neck and dragged him in front of people, and when they wanted to feed him, they brought him a plate and told him to eat like a dog.”

givesomefucks,

Torture never works because if they’re innocent, they’ll eventually confess to anything to stop the torture.

It’s why Israel keeps so many detainees without charging. Anytime they need a Boogeyman or excuse, they torture someone into admitting they’re Hamas, then get them to name others in whatever area they want to attack.

Treat your detainees bad enough, and you’ve got people begging to “confess” just to get out.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Torture has worked for israel for over 75 years. Lies and false confession is what it’s built on.

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