Shin Bet admits to using relatives to pressure detainees
'Interrogation method flawed and inconsistent with the agency's regulations,' top security official tells Knesset committee. MK Gal-On: In a democratic state, not everything is allowed even during times of war
Responding to claims that the Shin Bet is exerting severe and illegal pressure on the family members of Palestinians detainees in the course of investigations against them in an attempt to extract confessions, the head of the General Security Service's investigations branch said Sunday that "things could have been done differently".
Speaking at special meeting convened by the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on the heels of a report released by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the Shin Bet official said that in at least one case the interrogation method was flawed and inconsistent with the agency's regulations.
He vowed to refrain from employing this method in the future, but added that "we must remember that we are talking about a member of a Hamas cell, a murderer."
In one case, the PCATI report stated, "The Shin Bet threatened a subject named Said Diab that if he did not cooperate, his mother would be arrested. The next day he was brought to look through a peephole at his mother being aggressively questioned and crying." In the end, the report said, the mother was indicted on a marginal charge to justify the false arrest.
"The Shin Bet's interrogations have come under unprecedented scrutiny. This is the price a democratic country has to pay," the agency official said.
'Essence of democracy'
Knesset Member Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) said during the meeting that the Shin Bet "must do everything in its power to prevent terror, but in a democratic state, not everything is allowed even during times of war. The detainees' relatives must not be held hostage."
Kadima MK Otniel Schneller, for his part, said there was reason to reexamine the Shin Bet Law, which determines the agency's objectives, and also check the possibility of reevaluating the "human shield procedure", in which IDF soldiers use Palestinian residents to enter homes in which there is a suspicion of concealed suspects, in order to warn the building's occupants of an imminent forced entry by the soldiers. The procedure was outlawed by the High Court of Justice.
Committee chairman Menahem Ben-Sasson (Kadima) defended the decision to discuss the Shin Bet's interrogation methods, saying "such meetings are the essence of democracy.
"If we do not wish to lose our humanity, then we must ask the questions that arise from such reports."
