- The Danish Justice Minister yesterday issued a thinly
veiled threat to arrest Israel,s newly appointed Ambassador to Copenhagen
on torture charges.
-
- Carmi Gillon headed Israel,s Shin Bet domestic intelligence
service between 1994 and 1996 and has admitted authorising the torture
of prisoners, most of them Palestinians, during that period.
-
- Torture of any kind was outlawed by Israel,s supreme
court last year.
-
- Frank Jensen, the Justice Minister, said in a parliamentary
written answer to an extreme left-wing opposition party that Denmark was
obliged by the United Nations convention on torture to take into custody
anyone who could justifiably be suspected of complicity in torture who
set foot on Danish soil.
-
- His statement came after a row broke out when Mr Gillon
told a Danish newspaper, soon after his appointment was announced, that
Israel might return to the use of torture, which he described as "moderate
physical pressure, in the fight against terrorism.
-
- Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, was recently forced
to bypass Belgium on a European tour because he was in danger of being
arrested under a local law for alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon
in 1982.
-
- But human rights groups, including many run by Palestinians,
have pointed out that the prosecution of capital offences in areas under
the control of Yassir Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority, fall far
below accepted international norms.
-
- In addition, torture is commonplace in Palestinian jails,
where confessions are often extracted from prisoners after prolonged beatings,
sometimes meted out by the very men who were themselves the victims of
Israeli torture only a few years ago.
-
- Yesterday Shimon Peres, Israel,s Foreign Minister, stood
by Mr Gillon,s appointment. "If Denmark acts according to this method
it cannot allow in any member of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation)
who at one time was involved in terrorism, he said.
-
- "Is it permitted to be involved in terror but forbidden
to fight terror? Will they boycott all the members of the PLO? Will they
boycott Iran and Iraq? Mr Peres asked.
-
- Israel has been condemned for a policy of what the European
Union recently called "extra-judicial executions " the killing
of suspected terrorists.
-
- Yesterday Israel killed Salah Darwaza, an alleged Hamas
member and suspected master bomber, by shelling his car near Nablus. The
army claimed that he had been behind "massive terrorist attacks in
Israel.
-
- Palestinian groups fighting either for an independent
state, the destruction of Israel, or both, have faced little criticism
from human rights groups for the killing of civilians, prompting Mr Peres
to accuse the Danish of "double moral standards.
-
- http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001254626,00.html
|
