An Israeli reserve military colonel has revealed disturbing information about indecent torture methods exercised against Arab and Iranian prisoners in Israel’s notorious Unit 504 interrogation center.
Unit 504 is the Israeli army’s Intelligence Corps unit tasked with interrogating prisoners, particularly those with Arab and Iranian nationalities.
The colonel, who has come to be known as Het, shed light on the cruel abuse and inhumane treatment of Iraqi refugees by an Israeli inspector identified as Captain George.
He has also divulged details on how Captain George tortured his subjects including Mustafa Dirani, a former member of the Shia Lebanese Amal Movement, founded in 1974.
Het said that he attended an interrogation session during which Captain George raped a prisoner using a baton. The captain, who has never been questioned, now serves as the Arab affairs adviser to the chief of the Jerusalem district police.
This is while Dirani, who was abducted by Israeli forces in 1994, has testified that he was sodomized and tortured while being interrogated in Unit 504.
According to media reports, Israel’s Channel 2 later aired a footage showing a nude interrogator stripping Dirani while beating and raping him with a rod.
In 1999, Het contacted Zvi Rish, an Israeli attorney who represented Diraini and some abused Iraqi refugees, and insisted that he was seriously ill and wished to disclose his unit’s interrogation methods to "clear his conscience."
Additionally, in late December 2010, a human rights group called Public Committee Against Torture in Israel revealed that Palestinian detainees are systematically denied the right to meet a lawyer during interrogations.
Being shackled to chairs for long periods, sleep deprivation, intimidation, torture and abysmal detention conditions are some of the cases the rights group documented in its report.
Israel claims its army is “one of the most moral armies” in the world as it treats prisoners and detainees with honor.
But in recent years videos have come out, showing how Israeli soldiers abuse and humiliate blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees.
(Press TV)