The chase after a Hamas engineer?
Israel-Palestine, Judicial, 12/29/1997

Israel has so far failed to detain a prominent member of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and has recently detained a relative of his to exert pressure on the rest of the family. Ahmad Awadallah is believed by Israel to be the new engineer for explosive devices, taking over from his predecessor, Yihya Ayyash, who was assassinated by Israel late in 1995.

Awadallah's brother-in-law Fouad Awad Tor'an, a Hamas activist from Al-Bireh, was arrested more than a fortnight ago and since then has been interrogated by the Israeli General Security Services (Shin Bet) in Jerusalem. The GSS forbade Tor'an's lawyers, Leah Tsemel and Allegra Pacheco, from meeting with him and the ban was later ratified by the High Court, the judges of which claimed they had sufficient reason based on classified material presented to them by the Shin Bet.

Tsemel complained that her client was being tortured by his interrogators who used the "shake-up" method in which the head of a detainee under interrogation is shaken brutally until he either faints, or in critical cases, dies of brain concussion. But Shin Bet representatives denied to the court that Tor'an was subjected to any form of interrogation, claiming he was checked by a doctor who only gave him pain-killers. The judges, however, instructed the Shin Bet, at Pacheco's request, to submit to them the interrogation log on Tor'an so they could check the number of rest hours allotted to him.

Previous Stories:
  Hamas: New security agreement resembles war on Palestinians   (12/25/1997)
  Hamas criticizes Netanyahu statements on West Bank   (12/22/1997)
  Mossad revelations on its agent with the false information on Syria   (12/8/1997)

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