Israel army admits blindfolding Palestinians against protocol
Khamis, 15 Ogos 2019 10:14:48 PG
A
petition to Israel’s Supreme Court has forced the Israeli army to admit that
its soldiers break protocol by blindfolding Palestinians in their custody.
At the end of May, a petition was filed to Israel’s Supreme Court
by a group of left-wing activists who had compiled two and a half years’ worth
of evidence from Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank’s Jordan Valley who were routinely detained by Israeli army soldiers.
During their detention, the Palestinians were
handcuffed and often blindfolded for several hours, a practice the Israeli army
has now been forced to admit breaks the institution’s own protocol, Haaretz reported yesterday.
The petition argued that the large number of cases of detention
and blindfolding points to “an obscene habit of the Jordan Valley Brigade [of
the Israeli army], aimed at punishing the Palestinian shepherds and/or simply
abusing them.” It also stated that in some cases, Israeli activists
accompanying the shepherds were also detained, but unlike the Palestinians they
were not blindfolded, indicating a clear policy of discrimination, the Israeli
daily added.
On Sunday, the state prosecution submitted its response to the May
petition, seeking dismissal of the case on the grounds that “military orders
and regulations forbid the blindfolding of detainees, and action to clarify the
rules to the troops acting in the region has been taken and will continue to be
taken on a continuous basis.”
Source: Middle East Monitor