 | |
 | |
| Location | Northern Israel |
|---|---|
| Status | Operational |
| Opened | Classified |
| Managed by | Israeli Intelligence Corps |
Camp 1391, also referred to as Unit 1391 [1] or Facility 1391, [2] is an Israel Defense Forces prison camp in northern Israel for "high-risk" prisoners. [3] It is run by Unit 504. [1] The existence of the prison was unknown to the public before 2003, and most information about it remains classified, although the Supreme Court of Israel ordered the release of some information about the jail. [3]
Camp 1391 is situated in a Tegart fort on route 574 between kibbutz Barkai and kibbutz Ma'anit in northern Israel [4] and less than an hour's drive from Tel Aviv. [1] According to the Middle East Monitor, the coordinates were discovered by Israeli historian Gad Kroizer to be 32°28’11.93″N 35° 1’20.74″E, near Pardes Hanna-Karkur. [5]
The location of the camp was accidentally discovered by Kroizer, who found a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect while researching old British police buildings. On the map were 62 British police compounds in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where Arab and Jewish militants against the British occupation were interrogated. One building, "Meretz", did not appear on any modern Israeli maps and was not mentioned in any Israeli security literature. [5] In 2004, Kroizer published an article in an academic journal, mentioning the prison location in a footnote. Some days later, he received a phone call from Israel's military censor asking why the article had not been submitted for inspection. [1] According to The Guardian , the facility "had been airbrushed from Israeli aerial photographs and purged from modern maps". [4]
Camp 1391 is operated by the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps, a military intelligence corp, rather than by the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet. [4] A former prisoner of Camp 1391 "believed the facility was run by al-Jalma Interrogation Centre, one of Israel's harshest interrogation centres, and built before the Nakba in 1948." [6]
While prisoner information cannot be obtained, "[a] prisoners' rights committee in Nazareth said it was likely that 15 prisoners not documented in Israeli records were currently being held in the prison." [6]
Referred to by some as "the Israeli Guantanamo", [7] [8] [9] Camp 1391 was kept secret in such a manner as to be even unknown to David Libai, Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin's government and member of the secret services related ministerial committee. [8] According to Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who specialises in advising Palestinians, "Anyone entering the prison can be made to disappear, potentially forever, it's no different from the jails run by tinpot South American dictators." [7]
According to accounts of former captives, the detainees were led into the facility blindfolded, and kept in cells (most are 2 m × 2 m) with no natural light. Two smaller cells (1.25 m × 1.25 m) with heavy steel doors and black or red walls, and almost no light, were used for solitary confinement. Some of the cells did not have adequate toilet facilities and the guards controlled the running water. [8] A former inmate described to al-Araby al-Jadeed his mistreatment in 1391 after being transferred from Huwarra military camp, including extended isolation from other inmates, suffocation during sleep, interrogation period extending beyond 24 hours and extreme lack of food. [6]
Mustafa Dirani, an Amal commander [10] who was captured by the Israelis in May 1994 and released in 2004 as part of a prisoner swap, [11] has filed a suit in Tel Aviv's district court claiming he was sexually abused in the prison. [8] It has been acknowledged by the government of Israel that "within the framework of a military police investigation the suspicion arose that an interrogator who questioned the complainant threatened to perform a sexual act on the complainant". [4]
Inmates were not allowed visits at the facility from the Red Cross, nor were any other independent organization permitted to inspect the site. [9] The prisoners were not told where they were, nor were their families or lawyers. [8]
HaMoked, a major Israeli human rights organization, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to challenge the legality of the facility. [1] [2]
In 2003, in response to a lawsuit, Israeli government lawyers said that while the location was secret, Palestinians who were incarcerated there had their rights safeguarded, and could meet with lawyers and Red Cross at an off-site location. [3] In May 2009, the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) questioned Israeli officials about the facility and expressed skepticism about this claim. The CAT stated that "Israeli security secretly detains and interrogates prisoners in an unknown location called 'Camp 1391' without granting access to the committee, the International Red Cross (ICRC), or the lawyers or relatives of the prisoners", [12] questioned why interrogations at Camp 1391 were not recorded, and stated that "600 complaints of alleged ill-treatment or torture were brought between 2001 and 2006, but none had been followed up". [13]
Israeli officials maintain that Camp 1391 "is no longer used since 2006 to detain or interrogate suspects", but several petitions filed to the Israeli Supreme Court by the CAT to examine the facility have been rejected. [14] The Israeli Supreme Court also refused to allow an inquiry of the alleged abuses, declaring that Israeli authorities had acted reasonably in not conducting investigations into allegations of torture, ill-treatment and poor detention conditions of detainees. [13] [14] [15] The CAT responded to this by asserting that secret detention centers are per se a breach of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, concluding that the state "should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its control in the future" and that Israel "should investigate and disclose the existence of any other such facility and the authority under which it has been established. It should ensure that all allegations of torture and ill-treatment by detainees in Facility 1391 be impartially investigated, the results made public, and any perpetrators responsible for breaches of the Convention be held accountable." [14]
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism, and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense, against a Guantanamo detainee.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian engineer who was detained at Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016.
Camp Delta is a permanent American detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between 27 February and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. It is composed of detention camps 1 through 6, Camp Platinum, Camp Iguana, the Guantanamo psychiatric ward, Camp Echo and Camp No. The prisoners, referred to as detainees, have uncertain rights due to their location not on American soil. There are allegations of torture and abuse of prisoners.
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.
Fouad Mahmoud al Rabiah is a Kuwaiti, who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba from May 2002 to December 2009. Al Rabia's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 551.
Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj, aka Sami Al-Haj is a Sudanese journalist for the Al Jazeera network. In 2001, while on his way to do camera work for the network in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Pakistani army and held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for over six years. After his release, al-Hajj wrote a book titled Prisoner 345. He was released without charge on May 1, 2008. He later attempted to launch legal action against George W. Bush.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Black sites are clandestine detention centers operated by a state where prisoners who have not been charged with a crime are incarcerated without due process or court order, are often mistreated and murdered, and have no recourse to bail.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), also called GTMO on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in January 2002 by U.S. President George W. Bush to hold terrorism suspects and "illegal enemy combatants" during the Global War on Terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
Mourad Benchellali is a French citizen, who was captured by Pakistanis forces and detained in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 161.
Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani is a citizen of Pakistan who was extrajudicially detained by the United States military at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba from 2004 to 2023. He was never charged with a crime, was never tried, and was a subject of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Khaled Ben Mustafa is a citizen of France who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. The Department of Defense reports that Mustafa was born on January 9, 1972, in Lyon, France. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 236.
The Parwan Detention Facility is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. The Parwan Detention Facility, which housed foreign and local combatants, was maintained by the Afghan National Army.
The future of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is considered central to progress in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Cases of prison sentences include the charges of terrorism or being a member of an "illegal terrorist organization", such as Hamas or prior to the Oslo Accords the Palestine Liberation Organization, but according to some accounts also by political activism such as raising a Palestinian flag.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel is an Israeli NGO established in 1990 that monitors the use of torture and ill-treatment by Israeli security services against Palestinians under detention. PCATI was founded in 1990 in reaction to what it describes as "the ongoing policy of the Israeli government, which permitted the systematic use of torture and ill treatment in Shin Bet interrogations".
The Landau Commission was a three-man Commission set up by the Israeli Government in 1987 following a long-running scandal over the deaths of two Palestinian prisoners in custody and the wrongful conviction of a Circassian IDF officer. The Commission, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, found that the GSS interrogators routinely used physical force during the interrogation of prisoners and then committed perjury at subsequent trials. In its conclusion, approved by Cabinet in November 1987, it lay down guidelines for the use of a "moderate measure of physical pressure". The details of the recommended methods were described in the classified appendix to the report. In 1994 the UN Committee Against Torture stated: "The Landau Commission Report, permitting as it does 'moderate physical pressure' as a lawful mode of interrogation, is completely unacceptable to this Committee."
Israeli torture in the occupied territories refers to the use of torture and systematic degrading practices on Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The practice, routine for decades, was eventually reviewed by the Supreme Court of Israel in 1999, which found that "coercive interrogation" of Palestinians had been widespread, and deemed it unlawful, though permissible in certain cases. Torture is also practiced by the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent War on Terror, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centers, officially known as "black sites", to detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants, usually with the acquiescence, if not direct collaboration, of the host government.
During the Israel–Hamas war, Israel has systematically tortured Palestinians detained in its prison system. This torture has been reported by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as Israeli nonprofit human rights organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights Israel and B'Tselem.
Sde Teiman is an Israeli military base located in the Negev desert near the border with the Gaza Strip. During the Israel–Hamas war, its use as a detention camp doubled and gained international attention for its systemic human rights violations against its Palestinian detainees from the strip.