Mizan center demands Israel to probe torture of prisoners from Gaza

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Mizan center for human rights reported that it filed four complaints with the Israeli military prosecutor and the legal advisor to the Israeli government demanding them to conduct an investigation into the torture of Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip kidnapped during the last Israeli war. In a press statement received on Sunday by the PIC, the center underlined that the information obtained by its lawyer based on testimonies of prisoners released recently confirmed that the IOF troops had tortured and maltreated them. According to the testimonies, the IOF troops were using batons and rifle butts to beat the prisoners as well as they were shackling and blindfolding prisoners in painful positions for long hours. The center expressed its strong condemnation of the Israeli persistence in committing serious and organized violations against the rules of international humanitarian law and human rights principles especially the convention against torture. It re-emphasized that the convention against torture stipulates, in the second article, that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. Mizan also recalled that the same article of the convention states that an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. The center called on the international community especially the high contracting parties to the Geneva convention and the committee on the convention against torture to work on stopping the Israeli torture practices against Palestinian prisoners and to consider measures to compel Israel to abide by human rights standards when dealing with them. http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default