Israeli investigators threatened to rape Palestinian hunger striker Mohammed al-Qiq, his wife and children, according to his lawyer, Ashraf Abu Sneineh.
“In the beginning of the investigation of Mohammed they told him that they will keep him under administrative detention for seven years if he did not confess,” Abu Sneineh told Mondoweiss by telephone Wednesday morning. “He said ‘I have nothing to confess to and I don’t want to continue this investigation in this manner.’ So they threatened to rape him, his wife and his kids.”
After these threats, al-Qiq began his hunger strike, according to Abu Sneineh.
An Israeli high court refused to transfer the journalist from HaEmek Medical Center in Afula to receive treatment in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. After 86 days of hunger strike, Al-Qiq’s condition has continued to deteriorate and he could die at any time. “A thin line separates him from death. Mohammed is battling for his life. He is suffering from cramps in his arms and legs and irregular heartbeat,” Abu Sneineh said.
A video released earlier this week shows al-Qiq in his hospital bed in Afula, crying out in severe pain and asking for his three-year-old son, Islam.
According to Abu Sneineh, Israel has not officially charged al-Qiq because of insufficient evidence, and reliance on intelligence from informants. “They can’t give any proof against him, and even if they tried, he would be released the next day,” she said.
As the Jerusalem Post’s Jonah Jeremy Bob noted, incitement charges are typically insufficient for administrative detention.
Faiha’a Shalash, al-Qiq’s wife, said that when Israeli forces raided their home in the middle of the night in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, soldiers first knocked on the door with weapons, then blew off the door with explosives. “I didn’t even have time to put my clothes on before they blew off the door,” she told Mondoweiss. Soldiers then interrogated al-Qiq in his living room before taking him to Beit El settlement, where he was left outside handcuffed and blindfolded in the cold November weather for twenty hours, and finally transferred to al-Jalame prison, according to Shalash.
While her husband’s absence has been trying, she believes he is battling for a greater cause. “If Mohammed doesn’t do anything, it’s going to pave the way to put more Palestinians, especially journalists, under administrative detention,” Faiha’a Shalash said.
Al-Qiq’s nearly three-month hunger strike has received scant coverage in US media, and comes at a time of increased pressure on journalists. This week, Washington Post Jerusalem Bureau Chief William Booth and a colleague were detained by Israeli police at the Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem. Like al-Qiq, police accused Booth of incitement. An initial police statement accused Booth of “disturbance of the peace” for “propaganda purposes,” and later explained that the original accusation was “without foundation.” Shortly after, the Israeli Government Press Office released a statement saying, “Freedom of the press is a supreme value in the Israeli democracy.” The Washington Post has barely covered the al-Qiq case, using wire reports.
Israeli interrogators wielding sexual violence is not uncommon. After interrogators beat bloody Palestinian prisoner Rasmea Odeh, her father Josef Odeh was brought in and pressured to have sex with her, according to Alfred Lilienthal’s “The Zionist Connection.” After he refused, interrogators beat both of them before they “spread her legs and shoved the stick into her.”
Rape is OK with the Israelis. From Salon.com:
Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar has insisted that only rape can stop Palestinian militants. “The only thing that can deter terrorists,” the professor said after three Israelis were killed by Palestinian militants in the summer of 2014, “is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.”
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/event_at_nyc_college_with_israeli_scholar_who_said_only_rape_can_deter_palestinian_militants_postponed_after_protests/
Well if his lawyer, Ashraf Abu Sneineh, says it happened, it must be true.
RE: “Israeli interrogators threatened to rape al-Qiq and his family– so he launched hunger strike, lawyer says”
MY COMMENT: Words fail me, truly they do! ! !
“For the first week of her detention, Odeh was menstruating and the Israeli guards did not give her any sanitary protection or allow her access to the bathroom. She reported that for the first 25 days of her 45 days in detention in Jerusalem, Odeh was denied regular sleep and was continually beaten and humiliated.”
“One guard, known as “Abulhani,” punched her repeatedly on her ears, resulting in impaired hearing for two years.”
“Odeh was left naked for most of the time, in front of male guards as well as other detained men.”
“At one point, Odeh was forced to watch the torture of a detained man, during which the guards connected the man’s genitals to electrical wires and subjected him to electric shocks. Odeh reported that she watched him die during this torture.
Shortly after witnessing the electrocution, Odeh was herself tortured with electric shocks; the wires were attached to her genitals, breasts, abdomen, arms and legs.
In yet another incident, Odeh’s father was brought into a room where she was lying naked on the floor, and ordered to have sex with her. It was this threat that Odeh says finally coerced her to signing a confession.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/court-motion-details-palestinian-american-rasmea-odehs-torture-israeli
There is only one problem with Rasmieh’s claim that she was tortured, including sexually, for twenty five days. She had given a highly detailed confession one day after her arrest!
On March 3, 1969, just nine days after the bombing and three days after Rasmea’s arrest, JTA reported that the three key perpetrators of the SuperSol bombing — which would have included Rasmea — had confessed.
The SuperSol bombing took place on February 21, 1969, and the British Consulate attempted bombing on February 25, 1969.Rasmea was arrested on February 28, 1969. Police found a mountain of physical evidence, including bomb making material in Rasmeh’s bedroom an in her father’s house.
On February 24, 1969,three days after the Supersol bombing, The Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) reported that while almost 100 Arabs had been rounded up for questioning immediately after the bombing, 91 of whom were quickly released.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/rasmea-odeh-rightly-convicted-of-israeli-supermarket-bombing-and-u-s-immigration-fraud/
And just think — this Israel that sodomizes detainees with sticks — this is the same Israel that points proudly to the gay community in Tel Aviv as an example of its tolerance.