A U.N. human rights committee said Friday that Israeli interrogation methods such as prolonged sleep deprivation and violent shaking amount to torture and should be halted immediately.
The Committee Against Torture also denounced the use of death threats, loud music and other interrogation methods Israel uses on suspected terrorists."This conclusion is particularly evident where such methods of interrogation are used in combination, which appears to be the standard case," committee member Peter Thomas Burns said.
Israel denied torturing Palestinians and other detainees in an address to the committee on Wednes- day, and said its interrogation methods were justified because they helped prevent 90 terrorist attacks in the past two years.
"The responsibility of the government of Israel is to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks," Israeli representative Yosef Lamdan said. "It is faced with the agonizing dilemma of seeking information from terrorist suspects in order to save human lives, while at the same time implementing the Convention Against Torture in full."
But Burns disagreed, saying that as a signatory of the Convention Against Torture, Israel was not entitled to plea "exceptional circumstances as justification for acts the convention prohibits."
The committee also expressed concern that an Israeli Supreme Court decision allowing "moderate physical pressure" during interrogation legitimizes torture and called for an immediate end to the methods.
The conclusions had been widely expected. The committee has no enforcement powers, and committee chairman Dipanda Mouelle acknowledged that as a result its "voice was a weak one," with only moral obligations.
"We cannot but express disappointment at the conclusions of the committee," said Israeli representative Lamdan. "It is absolutely not the case that Israel uses torture."
Committee member Bent Sorensen told reporters the group's conclusions were based on reports by nongovernmental organizations as well as on medical reports and Israeli court records.
Sorensen cited an autopsy report on a 29-year-old Palestinian prisoner, Abdel Samad Harizat, who died in custody in 1995, which concluded that Harizat died of violent shaking during interrogation by Israeli security officials.
More than 20 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since 1987.
Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Israeli and Palestinian officials discussed security issues Friday, and U.S. envoy Dennis Ross pushed on with efforts to save the faltering Mideast peace.
But distrust between the two sides was not subsiding.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian youths hurled rocks, gasoline bombs and empty bottles at Israeli soldiers, who responded with rubber bullets. An Israeli general warned that the continued stalemate in Israel-Palestinian relations was bringing the two sides closer to armed conflict.
Peace talks and security cooperation broke off in March, after Israel began building a housing project for Jews on captured Arab land in Jerusalem.
"We are still in the stage of putting out feelers on the possibility of resuming the negotiations," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet Friday.