Today Alkarama, a Geneva-based human rights organisation, and the Beirut-based Khiam Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Torture sent a communication to the Special Rapporteur on Torture requesting his intervention with the Israeli occupation authorities to launch an immediate investigation into the torture of Imad Atawi in June.
Imad Atawi, a Lebanese shepherd, was kidnapped from Tallet Sadaneh, a Lebanese area on the outskirts of Kfar Shouba and Shebaa Farms, on 27 June 2010 by an Israeli Special Forces unit. He was imprisoned and tortured for 24 hours in an attempt to extract information from him regarding the Hezbollah presence in his area. He was then released and returned to Lebanon, where he was immediately put in a government hospital in Tyre due to the critical condition of his health at that point.
During this period he also underwent a medical examination by independent experts, who confirmed the presence of signs of torture on his body. The memorandum to the Special Rapporteur on Torture was accompanied by a medical report put together in the course of the examination of the wounds caused by torture.
Imad Hasan Atawi, born in 1973, is a married father of four. He lives in the Sadaneh area in Lebanon, next to the Syrian-Israeli border. For the past twenty years he has worked as a shepherd in this border region.
Atawi was arrested at midnight on 27 June 2010 by six Israeli soldiers in Tallet Sadaneh, on the outskirts of Kfar Shouba and the Shebaa Farms area. He was then taken across the border to an Israeli detention centre where he was detained until 28 June 2010. He was then released on the Israeli-Lebanese border at the Naqoura crossing point and handed over to the Red Cross, which in turn handed him over to the Lebanese Army.
During his detention in Israel, Atawi underwent various forms of torture. He was brutally beaten on every part of his body with rifle butts and kicks and was forced to stand for long periods while his hands were shackled and his eyes blindfolded. He was beaten continuously to the point of unconsciousness, after which his torturers poured a bottle of water over his head to wake him up. When he lost consciousness again, he was quickly taken to an Israeli hospital to receive treatment.
It should be remembered that the kidnapping and torture of Imad Atawi is just one of many cases of Lebanese being detained and tortured by the Israeli army.
For this reason, Alkarama and the Khiam Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Torture both request that the Special Rapporteur on Torture call upon the Israeli government to guarantee that no further kidnappings with torture like this one will be carried out by Israeli army forces, in accordance with the Israeli State's obligations under the Convention against Torture, and recalling that the Israeli State ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture on 3 October 1991.
For more information or an interview, please contact media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).