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Palestinian prisoner, 14, tortured in Israeli jail

April 12, 2014 at 12:35 pm

Israeli forces beat up, tortured and insulted the youngest Palestinian prisoner Rasheed Rasmi Al-Rashq, a 14-year-old from Jerusalem, following his arrest on February 10, Palestinian officials said.


The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs lawyer Hiba Masalha revealed Al-Rashq said he had been tortured and abused from the moment he was brutally arrested. The youth was incarcerated in the Sharon prison complex for juveniles after three Israeli soldiers took him from his family home in to a military vehicle and began beating him in the face and stomach.

“They took me to an area next to the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem and locked me in a room filled with motor-driven machinery. Later two policemen and an officer began punching me in the stomach and face demanding I confess. One of them pushed me to the floor and stepped on my back,” Al-Rashq said.

The teenager added he was transferred to the Russian Compound Detention Centre where he was interrogated for 30 days non-stop and on one occasion he was left naked until the morning. He was harassed by prison guards while the investigators tied him to a chair and insulted him using obscene language and spat on him.

According to Al-Rashq the investigators prevented him from going outside like the rest of the prisoners and from taking part in educational classes and forced him to clean the rooms. He said his jailors often had extremely loud and strange noises playing during the night to disturb him from sleep that caused him severe headaches.