Farwana: Jewish settlements being used to blackmail children

 Palestinian rights expert Abdel Nasser Farwana expressed concerns about Israeli authorities using West Bank Jewish settlements as a place to detain, single out, and violently question children.

Excessive force and torture are employed to squeeze confessions out of children, Farwana documented, adding that they are at times bargained with and blackmailed before being transferred to official interrogaion centers and prisons.

Child arrests and torture inside the settlements poses a disturbing phenomenon that must be addressed by all possible means. It must not be allowed to continue, Farwana said.

Testimonies given by many released detainees have disclosed the amount of psychological and physical damage they sustained while detained. Yet they were not examined by a medical specialist, and were denied lawyer visits to inform them of their rrights and witness their ordeals inside the settlements, and were not visited by any Red Cross official.

Children are the most targeted group in West Bank settlements and in the Jerusalem Maale Adumim settlement, Farwana went on to say. “They have been subjected to humiliation, forced to stand naked or near naked in the cold, and exposed to threats, blackmail, and bargaining to pull confessions out of them.”

Farwana called on rights groups and the media to document those testimonies and shed light on the disturbing phenomenon, calling the acts a blatant violation of international law.