UN agency accuses Israel of detaining, coercing staffers into false confessions about ties to Hamas | CNN
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The UN agency for Palestinian refugees Monday accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Monday accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas.

“Some of our staff have conveyed to UNRWA teams that they were forced to (make) confessions under torture and ill-treatment. These false confessions were in response to questioning about relations between UNRWA and Hamas and involvement in the 7 October attack against Israel,” UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said in a statement.

Israel has accused at least 12 staffers from the UN Relief and Works Agency of being involved in the October 7 terrorist attacks and has alleged that about 12% of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers are members of Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups. Israeli officials have said some of the information about the 12 staffers involved in October 7 was obtained through cell phone data and other sources. UNRWA says it has fired 10 of the 12 accused staffers and that the other two are dead. CNN cannot confirm the allegations.

  • GrymEdm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    124·
    9 months ago

    Israel has been using these types of techniques on captives (Israeli and otherwise) to gain coerced confessions for a long time now.

    In 2014, Australian journalists produced a documentary called Stone Cold Justice: Israel’s torture of Palestinian children. An excerpt from the description: A film which has been produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv’s use of torture against Palestinian children. The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists.