February 9, 2000

Israel Admits Using Illegal Force

Filed at 2:16 p.m. EST

By The Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli government report publishedWednesday acknowledged what Palestinians and human rights groupshave said for years -- that Israel systematically used illegal forceagainst Palestinian suspects during the intefadeh.

The State Comptroller's report, written in 1997 but withheld bythe government until now, said Shin Bet security agents whointerrogated suspects also systematically lied about their actionsto their superiors and to the courts.

The report covers the years 1988-92, when the intefadeh, orPalestinian uprising against Israel, was at its height.Unprecedented numbers of Palestinians were being arrested andinterrogated.

It says the Shin Bet routinely went beyond the ``moderatephysical pressure'' authorized by a 1987 commission headed bythen-Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau.

Human rights groups in Israel maintain that the practicesauthorized by the Landau commission -- keeping prisoners inexcruciatingly uncomfortable postures, covering their heads withfilthy and malodorous sacks and depriving them of sleep -- amount totorture.

The report, written by former State Comptroller MiriamBen-Porat, says the agents systematically overstepped even thesebounds, especially at the interrogation facility in the Gaza Strip.

``Most of the violations were not caused by lack of knowledge ofthe line between what was permitted and what was forbidden, butwere committed knowingly,'' the report said. ``At the Gazafacility, veteran and even senior investigators committed verygrave and systematic violations.''

The report accuses the entire leadership of the Shin Bet ofknowing what was going on but doing nothing to stop it. It says theagents lied about their activities in court, to other investigatingagencies and in their reports to superiors.

``The assurances of senior Shin Bet officials to the LandauCommission that truth-telling inside the organization is enforced... were found to have no basis in reality,'' Ben-Porat wrote.

Gideon Ezra, an opposition Likud lawmaker who was the Shin Betcommander in the West Bank at the time, said the report wasdetached from reality. ``The state comptroller had no way ofknowing the impossible task facing the Shin Bet during thatperiod,'' he told Israel army radio. Six years later, he said, thereport is ``irrelevant.''

The report acknowledges that the security issues faced by theagents at the time were unprecedented, and that they succeeded insolving large numbers of terrorist crimes and preventing an evenlarger number. The report describes this activity as ``holy work,''but criticizes the methods used and recommends measures to ensurethey be stopped.

Ben-Porat's report was submitted to an intelligence subcommitteeof the Parliamentary State Audit Committee in 1997, but thesubcommittee decided to keep it under wraps.

Two years after the report was written, the Supreme Court bannedthe use of physical force in interrogations, even within the limitsset by the Landau Commission.

The report was made public Wednesday in response to a SupremeCourt recommendation.

The intefadeh, which began in 1987, ended in 1993 with peaceaccords between Israel and the Palestinians.