Palestine: Rights group condemns political arrests
The Independent Commission for Human Rights has accused security services in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip of politically motivated arrests.
A Palestinian human rights group has accused security services in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip of politically motivated arrests.
"Arbitrary arrests based on political motives have become part of the daily work of the security services in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), a Palestinian rights group, said in its 2008 annual report.
Security forces in the Israeli-occupied West Bank answer to the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, while the Gaza Strip has been ruled by the rival Islamist Hamas movement since June 2007.
Since Hamas seized power in Gaza, cleaving the Palestinians into two hostile rival camps, each side has accused its rival of political arrests and torture.
The ICHR said it had received 163 complaints of torture or mistreatment in detention facilities in the Palestinian territories over the past year, 111 in the West Bank and 52 in Gaza.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, an independent organisation based in Gaza, meanwhile called for an investigation into the death of a Palestinian man it said had been tortured by Hamas-run security services.
The group said Zayed Jaradat, 40, was dead on arrival at a hospital in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after being arrested on charges of drug possession.
The group said Jaradat's body was covered in bruises and that his toenails had been removed.
Last month Hamas accused Abbas's security forces of torturing one of its members to death at a prison in the northern West Bank town of Jenin. The Palestinian Authority said the man committed suicide.
Date: 18 March 2009
Source: AFP
