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.