A suspected Islamic militant who died in Israeli custody was tortured to death, a pathologist who attended the autopsy said Friday.
Israeli media said the detainee, Abdel-Samad Harizat, was beaten for 20 minutes, had his head banged against a wall, then was left alone unconscious in a tiny isolation cell.The beatings were carried out by five Palestinian collaborators who acted under orders from interrogators of the Shin Bet secret police, Israel army radio and the Maariv newspaper said.
An autopsy was performed Thursday by two Israeli pathologists, with a Scottish pathologist, Dr. Derek Pounder, attending at the request of the Harizat family.
Pounder said Friday that all three doctors reached the same conclusion.
"There is no doubt whatsoever about the cause of death and it is very clear that he died from unnatural causes, and that he died from torture," Pounder said on army radio. He would not elaborate.
Harizat, 29, was a suspected activist in the Muslim militant group Hamas, which has carried out a series of bombing attacks in Israel in an effort to derail the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization autonomy accord.
The Shin Bet was interrogating Hazirat in hopes he would lead them to members of Hamas' military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, in the West Bank town of Hebron.
Government spokesman Uri Dromi said restrictions on Shin Bet interrogators were relaxed after a series of deadly suicide bombings killed dozens of Israelis in the past year.