Checkpoint horror story false by Amira Hass 3:16pm Sun Jul 27 '03 A Palestinian who claimed that he was held and beaten for 30 hours at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint now admits that it was actually the Palestinian security services who held him and beat him. print article Checkpoint horror story false By Amira Hass Beaten Palestinian says it was PA security forces, not IDF A Palestinian who claimed that he was held and beaten for 30 hours at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint now admits that it was actually the Palestinian security services who held him and beat him. For four days, over and over, Afif Barghouti, 31, told family, friends and journalists of how Israeli soldiers had held him at the Qalandiyah checkpoint for some 30 hours, blindfolded and with his hands tied, and beat him. They did not even let him go to the bathroom, he said. He also told the story to an attorney friend, who hurried him to the hospital in Ramallah for a check-up. That was on Sunday, July 20, shortly after the soldiers had allegedly released him. The Palestinian press ran prominent photos of his bruised and battered back, accompanied by his story. According to these reports, he had tried to pass through the checkpoint on his way to a plastering job in A-Ram. His identity card also contained his membership card in Fatah, and that, combined with the name Barghouti, was enough to make the soldiers decide to hold him and abuse him, he said. (Another Barghouti, Marwan, is a senior Fatah official currently on trial in Israel for alleged involvement in the murder of dozens of Israelis.) There was certainly no doubt that Barghouti had been beaten. His back was red from the blows, his head bore a round burn mark where a lighted cigarette had been stubbed out on his skin. His hands were swollen, and he had trouble moving both his hands and his head. Haaretz English Edition published his story yesterday ("Anyone who walked by, kicked,") along with the IDF Spokeswoman's response, in which the army said that it was looking into the allegations, and if they were found to be true, they would be "handled with the utmost severity." The IDF "views with severity any behavior that involves humiliation of or violence toward the Palestinian population," the spokesman added. But army officials have now told Haaretz that their investigation has revealed the allegations to be false. They said that from the moment they first learned of the allegations - from the media - last Sunday, sector commanders had begun interrogating all soldiers and officers who could have been involved in the affair, even bringing soldiers on leave back to base for this purpose. They also made intensive efforts to locate Barghouti, so that he could attempt to identify the soldiers who had abused him and finally succeeded, thanks to the numerous interviews he granted, including to the Israeli media. For two days, he refused to meet with the IDF investigators, but finally agreed to come to Qalandiyah to reenact what had happened. There, the officials said, it became clear, "on the basis of the interrogation and the testimony he gave, that his initial version did not match the reality on the ground, and it is evident that the story was not true." When confronted with the IDF's response, Afif Barghouti admitted to his lawyer friend that he had made the whole story up. What really happened, he said, was that on Saturday, Palestinians he recognized as working for the Palestinian security services had seized him, held him for almost two days and beaten him. He said that they suspected him of being an Israeli collaborator, to which he responded: "I don't work with the Israelis and I don't work with the Palestinians." His friend said that he cannot understand why Barghouti invented the Qalandiyah checkpoint story. A senior official in the Preventive Security Service in Ramallah told Haaretz yesterday that the service has no record of Barghouti ever being suspected of collaborating with Israel. The service has no idea who beat him or why, he said, but it intends to summon him for questioning to find out. Dr. Said Zeedani, director-general of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights, said that his organization investigates many complaints that Palestinian citizens were abused by the Palestinian security services, and will investigate Barghouti's claim as well. However, he stressed, the commission also investigates many complaints of abuse by Israeli soldiers that turn out to be true. "There are a few cases of people who make things up, but these cases cannot be allowed to divert attention from the humiliations and physical injuries that occur at Israeli army checkpoints," he said. He said that people who do invent stories do so for a variety of reasons, including a desire for revenge, a desire to impress someone and a desire to remove suspicions of being a collaborator. www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?... add your comments Source file

....wadda ya know by goldberg 1:00am Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment ....i can not believe it...a trumped up abuse story ..like it does not happen all the time....thank you for posting it indy-media fair is fair add your comments

And it is news because it is rare by Peter Kropotkin 8:08am Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment Hey Goldsperm, So because in this specific incident the man made false claims, that means that Israel is absolved of responsibility for all the other cases that the authorities found no proof of false claims. The reason it was news is because it was a rare story. Obviously you are going to generalize on a specific and we will see you mentioning this incident every time there is a future claim, legitimate or not. Shoot away goldsperm. By the way, does your brain have a 2 sentence limit. You write 100's of 1-2 sentence arguments with rarely a substantial aspect to the argument except opinion. And, yah, Indymedia does usually play it fair as far as I see...much more fair than Arutz 7 or any of those other whacko right wing dribble sites that only allow one voice to speak. add your comments

Hats off to Indymedia by Ben 9:20am Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment Its true that Indymedia played fair in this case, though why should we expect less. So many of Amira Hass' stories accusing Israel of crimes make it into the headlines, why should a correction story be ignored? But the reason this story is news is not because it is rare. It is because a few days earlier the phony account was given prominence in Haaretz, so when the truth comes out, a story like this is needed to correct the record. I would think that a story like this would highlight the random brutality of the Palestinian security people and the fear of the going public with accusations. We are seeing an enormous human rights catastrophe in the PA, and doing nothing about it. Where is the ISM when you need them? Oh, I forgot, they have no problem with Palestinian violence. add your comments

Selfdetermination by John Veldhuis 10:16am Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment These kind of things take place when men are given weapons, power and responsability without the proper control mechanisms, be it at Israeli Checkpoints outside of Israel, of at Palestinian Police Stations in their own territories. It happens with every "security" force without parliamentary control, outside democracy, and sometimes even within. For a Palestinian civilian getting beat up there's not much difference between the random brutality of the Palestinian security people and that of the Israeli security people or settlers. Being beaten up by Israeli's would hopefully take Palestinians goons of their back, as the blackmail of "you help us or we tell everyone you helped us" is still in use. Every people has the right to their own police. Every people has the possibility to mess it up. That the PA needs (a lot) more democracy, is still no justification for the presence of Israeli "civilians" in the Palestinian Territories. add your comments

Sounds Familiar by Skip 2:32pm Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment "Obviously you are going to generalize on a specific and we will see you mentioning this incident every time there is a future claim, legitimate or not." - Peter Kropotkin Sounds like what the ISM did with Rachel Corrie, does it not? add your comments

I don't think so, Skip.... by John Veldhuis 3:49pm Mon Jul 28 '03 print comment ""Obviously you are going to generalize on a specific and we will see you mentioning this incident every time there is a future claim, legitimate or not." - Peter Kropotkin Sounds like what the ISM did with Rachel Corrie, does it not?" Hardly... add your comments