Source: Human Rights Watch
Traumatizing and unlawful interrogations:
Israeli security forces routinely submit children to violent and weeks-long interrogation without a parent present. They use intimidation, threats, and physical violence, with the clear purpose of forcing the child to confess. Children are restrained during the interrogation, in some cases to the chair they are sitting on. This may continue for many hours at a time, resulting in pain to their hands, back, and legs, and general exhaustion.
Children have been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault, against themselves or a family member. The interrogators sometimes accuse them of a long list of crimes. Most children confess, under pressure, at the end of the interrogation. The interrogator prints out some forms and orders the child to sign them, though the child often lacks a proper understanding of their contents. In most cases the forms are in Hebrew, which the overwhelming majority of Palestinian children do not understand. Children are also moved outside of the occupied territories, to prisons in Israel, in violation of Article 76 of the Geneva Convention, making it difficult for their parents to visit them. Source: UNICEF
Solitary Confinement:
Some children are held in solitary confinement, both before the court hearing as well as after sentencing, for a period ranging from two days up to one month. Isolation is an additional tool to pressure the children to cave-in and confess, often to things they did not do but feel forced to say so they are not left alone in solitary confinement. Some children mention ending up doubting what they actually did or didn't do, and suffer trauma and psychological damage as a result of the experience.
Source: UNICEF
Other abuses reported:
Testimonies report many other types of abuses endured during detention, including:
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-- Deprivation of food and water
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-- 60% of children report being strip searched (Source: MCW )
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-- Kept outside half naked in the cold
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-- Transported from jail to jail so they get tired and relatives have difficulties tracking them
down
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-- Electric shocks (Source: The Guardian )
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