Facility 1391: Known as "Israel's Guantanamo," and with the same type of legal questions h

Detainees are blindfolded and kept in blackened cells, never told where they are, brutally interrogated and allowed no visitors of any kind. Dubbed 'the Israeli Guantanamo,' it's no wonder facility 1391 officially does not exist. M, who serves in the Intelligence Corps reserves,
remembers the first time he was sent to do guard
duty at Camp 1391. Before climbing to the top of
the observation tower he received an explicit
order from the responsible officer: "When you're
on the tower you look straight ahead only, outside
the base, and to the sides. What happens behind
you is none of your business. Do not turn
around."

M., of course, couldn't resist
the temptation and occasionally
snuck a look behind him. From
atop the tower he saw the
double fence surrounding the
camp, enclosing a compound
ruled by trained attack dogs;
the jeep that patrols inside
the two fences; the vehicles
utilized by the members of the
unit who man the base; and especially the large
concrete structure, dating from the British
Mandate period, when it was used by the British
police, and which now bears a description that
carries an aura of mystery: Israel's secret
detention facility.

Some of the people who were interviewed for this
article dubbed the camp "the Israeli
Guantanamo." There are in fact certain points
of resemblance between the American detention
camp in Cuba and the Israeli site, mainly in
relation to the legal questions that hover over
them and the gnawing doubt about whether they
are consistent with the values of democracy. In
terms of the exotic, though, we lag far behind.
Whereas the watchtowers of the Guantanamo
facility look out over the aquamarine waters of
the Caribbean Sea, the secret prison in Israel
is situated by the side of a completely
ordinary road in the heart of a bustling region
in the center of the country.

A narrow, tree-lined road ascends to the camp,
and inside it looks like any other army base:
barracks, mess hall, workshop to repair
vehicles. Even the guards are not the best the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have available. The
guard towers and the patrols are manned, for
the most part, by graduates of the IDF's
general basic training program, who "never
carried out an assault against anything," as
one of them put it. "As always with us, there's
a lot of hoo-ha, but behind it is the usual
army chaos," an officer who served at the base
says ironically.

What really surrounds Camp 1391, more than
physical protection, is an entrenched wall of
silence. Since the 1980s, when the facility was
moved from a more southerly location to its
present site, the Israeli authorities have made
every effort to keep its very existence secret.
And even now that its existence has been
revealed, the state refuses to answer the many
questions of the world and of the Israeli
public: Where is the facility? Who is being
held there, why, and for how long? Were they
tried before being locked up in Camp 1391, or
are they awaiting trial? What are their
conditions of incarceration? In every other
lockup in Israel the answers to these and many
other questions are open and amenable to
external, legal, public and international
review.

As far as is known, the 1391 site is the only
detention facility whose detainees don't know
where they are. If they ask, the warders may
answer, "on the moon," or "in outer space," or
"outside the borders of Israel." It is also the
only detention facility that the state prevents
the International Red Cross from visiting. Nor,
as far as can be ascertained, have Knesset
members ever visited the place, and many of the
politicians who have been asked about it in the
past few weeks said they had never heard of it
- including some who have held senior positions
in the government, such as Prof. David Libai,
who was justice minister in the government of
Yitzhak Rabin and a member of the ministerial
committee that deals with the secret services:
"I will not say a single word about the
subject, for the simple reason that I am not
familiar with it. This is the first time I have
ever heard about such a thing."

If a former justice minister doesn't know about
it, a disturbing question arises: who does? Dan
Meridor, another former justice minister and
chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee, is aware of the facility's
existence: "I'm not sure there's anything wrong
here," he says. "I remember that as a minister
and as one who dealt with intelligence matters,
I visited every place I wanted to and
everything was always open to me. I know about
the existence of this facility, but I was never
there - apparently because I never asked to
visit it. I don't want to bandy words about,
because I am not familiar with the subject in
depth. There are many complex questions of
human rights involved here."

Do you think it's right that in the State of
Israel there is a facility in which people
don't know where they are, nor do their
families or lawyers?

"No. If there are people who are incarcerated
incommunicado, that doesn't seem right to me."

According to attorney Dan Yakir, the legal
adviser of the Association of Civil Rights in
Israel (ACRI), "A secret detention facility
contradicts basic principles of every democracy
- transparency and public supervision over the
governmental authorities. And those principles
are especially important in relation to the
deprivation of freedom - which is one of the
most severe infringements of human rights. The
existence of a lockup like this gives rise to a
double concern: first, of secret arrests and
`disappearances' of people; and second, an
abuse of power, unfair treatment, violence and
torture."

As will be seen, attorney Yakir's concerns are
well founded.

Stepson of army intelligence

Camp 1391 is an Israel Defense Forces facility.
Agents of the Shin Bet security service and
other security branches visit the site and
since the start of the intifada have apparently
made greater use of it than in the past, but
the facility belongs to the IDF. One of the
reasons for the wall of secrecy that surrounds
it is the fact that it is located in the center
of a military base that belongs to one of the
secret units of the Intelligence Corps - Unit
504 (according to foreign sources the unit's
name has recently been changed). Unit 504
gathers intelligence by means of the human
factor - "humint." Most of its work is done by
using agents outside Israel.

The officers in the unit, which is not large,
are known as katamim (acronym for "officers for
special tasks") and undergo two-track training.
Some of them handle agents and the others -
former members of the unit say they are those
whose skills the system isn't wild about - are
directed to the hakshabim track (interrogators
of prisoners). The unit commander is an officer
with the rank of colonel. The attitude toward
the unit is characterized by duality: on the
one hand, this is a small, seemingly elitist
unit, which carries out sensitive missions; on
the other hand, as one of the unit's members
says, "We are the stepson of army intelligence.
Sometimes you look at some of the officers and
you ask yourself whether these are the
standards the IDF assigns to these posts."

The same individual adds, "There is also a
problem about the impact of long-term service
on their mental state. To be an interrogator
you have to start out with some kind of scratch
on the brain. But the handlers, too - after a
time they also start to be handlers in their
private life. You see it in their attitude
toward women, with the family, even in the
interaction between the people in the unit."

Along with operational successes, which have
naturally remained far from the public eye, the
names of some of the unit's members have been
linked to dubious affairs in recent years. One
of the unit's commanders became criminally
entangled because of a romantic affair. Another
accidentally discharged his pistol during a
meeting with the command personnel.
Jean-Pierre Elraz, who last year was accused of
murdering Yitzhak Kvartatz, the security
coordinator of Kibbutz Manara, is a former
member of the unit (and afterward served in the
Shin Bet); so is Major Yosef Amit, who was
convicted of aggravated espionage and contact
with a foreign agent.

During the IDF's 18-year presence in Lebanon,
the members of Unit 504 were especially active
across Israel's northern border. To this day
the Lebanese press occasionally runs stories
about the arrest and trial of local agents who
operated in the service of Unit 504. In
November 1998, a Lebanese court convicted no
fewer than 57 citizens of collaborating with
Israel via the unit. The penalty for this
offense: death.

The unit's extensive activity in Lebanon placed
Camp 1391 at the center of affairs. It became
the entry gate to Israel for Lebanese,
especially those who were suspected of
membership in Hezbollah, who were transferred
to the southern side of the border. Some of
them were captured in battle, others were
abducted at Israel's initiative. The most
famous of the abductees are Sheikh Abd al Karim
Obeid, who was seized in 1989, and Mustafa
Dirani, who was brought by force to Israel in
1994. The helicopter in which members of
Sayeret Matkal, the ultra-elite reconnaissance
unit, took Obeid from his home in the town of
Jibsheet, took him directly to the gates of
Camp 1391. The next time Obeid left the camp -
apart from medical checks and to appear in
court when his detention was extended - was 13
years later. Last summer Obeid and Dirani were
moved to Ashmoret prison, near Kfar Yona in the
Netanya area.

However, well-known anti-Israel activists such
as Obeid and Dirani are not the only abductees
who have been thrown into Camp 1391. When the
soldiers of Sayeret Matkal entered Obeid's
house in the dead of night they encountered a
few other people, too, among them some of
Obeid's relatives and his bodyguard. Hashem
Fahaf, then about 20, who happened to visit the
sheikh that day to receive his blessing and
decided to stay overnight, was especially
unlucky. The soldiers bundled him into the
helicopter, too. He spent the next 11 years
incarcerated in Israel, initially in Camp 1391
and afterward in Ayalon Prison in Ramle. During
this entire period he was not tried or accused
of any crime. In the first years of his
incarceration, Israel denied he was in the
country and refused him any contact with the
outside world.

In April 2000, Fahaf, by now 31, was released by
order of the Supreme Court. Together with him
another 18 Lebanese, who according to the
official version were being held as "bargaining
chips" for the missing air force navigator Ron
Arad, were also released. The group included
two men who had been kidnapped and brought to
Israel when they were teenagers aged 16 and 17,
as well as Ghasan Dirani, a relative of Mustafa
Dirani, who developed catatonic schizophrenia
during his incarceration in Israel. At one
stage or another, all of them were held in
Camp 1391.

Inside the facility

In aerial photographs of the area in which Camp
1391 is located - as is the case with aerial
photos of other security-sensitive sites in the
country - the facility and the large building
in its center are nonexistent. Most maps of
Israel also do not cite the facility, though on
a few maps of the Nature and National Parks
Protection Authority, it is marked by means of
a letter, with no further explanation. There is
no sign on the main road directing the curious
to the camp. After we drove around the base a
couple of times and stopped a bit to take
pictures, a security vehicle was sent out to
follow us for a few kilometers. At the first
opportunity, two armed and surly security men
got out of the vehicle and barraged us with
questions.

Anyone entering the camp has to negotiate two
iron gates draped with barbed wire. The first
gate closes after the visitor enters and only
then does the second gate open. The detention
and interrogation section is located not far
from the mess hall. A person who served on the
base recalls with a smile that a poster
spelling out the main points of the Geneva
Convention hung on one of the walls of the
dining hall. The cells proceed along a
corridor; they abut one another but are
separated by thick concrete walls. The
detainees can communicate by knocking on the
walls, "and they often shout to one another,"
relates an officer who served in the facility.
"That is forbidden, but we didn't always have
the energy to deal with it."

The detainees are led into the facility
blindfolded, to prevent them from knowing where
they are. Their personal effects are taken
from them, as are their clothes and they are
given blue pants and a blue shirt. The cells
are pretty much identical, though there are two
levels of detainees: those who are in the
middle of being interrogated, who get the worst
cells and worst conditions; and those whose
interrogation has been completed.

Two of the cells are relatively large (2.5 x 4
meters), have reasonable lighting and running
water, and are therefore called the "villas" by
the prisoners. Sheikh Obeid shared one of the
"villas" with two Lebanese detainees. Two of
the solitary confinement cells are considered
the worst of the lot. They are 1.25 x 1.25
meters in size, almost completely dark, and the
walls are painted black or red. The differences
between the other cells are largely
insignificant, expressed mainly in the form of
a few basic rights that are accorded to those
whom the system no longer has any reason to
subject to psychological pressure.

The doors of the cells are made of heavy steel,
with a small crack - which can be opened only
from the outside - being the only opening to
the outside world. The cells measure about 2 x
2 meters and are made entirely of concrete on
the inside. There are no windows or any source
of external light. Abutting one of the walls is
a concrete platform that serves as a bed, with
a mattress and a blanket on it. On the wall
opposite is an orifice, a kind of pipe through
which water flows, but the tap is controlled by
soldiers outside the cell. Below the water
source is a hole in the floor that the
detainees use to relieve themselves. That, it
turns out, is a privilege. In some of the
cells, apparently those used for detainees
under interrogation, there is no place at all
to go to the toilet: the prisoners have to use
a large plastic bucket, which is emptied only
once every few days.

There are ventilation openings in the upper part
of the cells, but the main testimony to their
existence is the noise they make when they are
turned on. A lamp protected by heavy glass
casts a dim light 24 hours a day. The detainees
have no way to tell night from day. Most of the
cells are also under supervision by means of
cameras that send the images via closed-circuit
television. The majority of the prisoners are
incarcerated alone, though some of the cells
have two concrete platforms and in some cases
hold two prisoners.

The detainees receive the same food the soldiers
get. Three times a day, soldiers open the door,
bring in a dish and then close the door. The
procedure is that before the soldier enters he
knocks at the door, at which point the detainee
must place a black sack on his head and turn
around with his hands raised. The warders,
members of the Military Police who are seconded
to the facility, are not armed. Weapons may not
be introduced into the facility, to prevent a
situation in which one of the prisoners might
seize a warder's weapon. The warders are only
allowed to open the cell doors in pairs.

Once a day the detainees - those whose
interrogation has ended - are allowed out for
one hour in a small inner courtyard of sand and
vegetation. The conditions of imprisonment,
says a person who served in the facility, are
relatively reasonable. Similarly, attorney Zvi
Rish, the lawyer of Obeid, Dirani and many of
the other Lebanese who were incarcerated in the
facility in the 1990s, confirms that his
clients had no special complaints about the
conditions - referring only to the period after
their interrogation had ended. What goes on
during the interrogation process is another
story altogether, one that sheds light on one
of the darker corners of Israel.

Let George do it

On Friday evening, July 28, 1989, the
adrenaline was coursing through Camp 1391. In a
well-planned operation, Sayeret Matkal
succeeded in grabbing Sheikh Obeid from his bed
in the town of Jibsheet, about eight kilometers
north of the Israeli border. Obeid was
considered a spiritual authority in Hezbollah,
but despite the high hopes, his abduction did
not further the search for Ron Arad, who had
been missing since his plane was downed over
Lebanon three years earlier.

Soldiers who served in the facility at the time
say that in the course of time they developed
good relations with prisoner no. 801260. They
taught him Hebrew - he reached an impressive
level of fluency in the language - and he
taught them Arabic. Obeid is described as the
spiritual mentor of the prisoners and even of
the warders. "With him everything was done
quietly and with restraint, with grace and
decorum. Even the warders treated him almost
like `your honor the rabbi,'" recalls an
officer who served at the facility.

In May 1994 an honorable guest joined the order
of the Lebanese prisoners at Camp 1391: Mustafa
Dirani. He was another bargaining chip from
whom Israel hoped to extract information about
Ron Arad, or even to exchange for Arad, but he,
too, proved a disappointment. Many months of
planning preceded the abduction of Dirani, who
was head of the security division in the
Shi'ite movement Amal, and as such had been
responsible for holding Ron Arad for about two
years.

A few days before he was seized and brought to
Israel, the interrogators of Unit 504 were
given all the intelligence material that had
been collected about him. When he arrived at
the facility there was a feeling of an imminent
breakthrough. In the first days of the
interrogation all the ranking members of the
defense establishment turned up at the facility
- prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the chief of
staff, the director of Military Intelligence
and officials from the Mossad espionage agency
and the Shin Bet.

Dirani's interrogation began seconds after he
was grabbed. In special cases interrogators
from Unit 504 accompany a force that operates
across the lines, with the aim of taking
advantage of the abductee's initial shock. The
interrogation continued in the vehicle that
brought Dirani to his cell in Camp 1391 and
then for the next five weeks continuously
around the clock. The chief interrogators were
the unit commander, career and reservist
personnel - the latter were mobilized
especially for the mission -and above all a
major who introduced himself as George.

George, who is now 43 and lives in a small
community in the center of the country, is dark
with cropped hair, brown eyes and a solid body.
He is considered one of the unit's toughest
interrogators. The relationship that developed
between George and Dirani was the stuff of
quite a few newspaper headlines. It will
continue to engage the courts during the years
to come.

Still pending in Tel Aviv District Court is a
suit filed by Dirani against the State of
Israel and Major George concerning two
incidents in which Dirani says he was subjected
to sexual abuse. In the first case George
called in four of the soldiers who were doing
guard duty in the facility and one of them
allegedly raped Dirani at George's orders. In
another case, Dirani says in the suit, George
himself inserted a wooden stick into his
rectum.

The court will have to decide whether these
events occurred. A perusal of the affidavits
that have been submitted to the court,
testimonies of officers and soldiers who served
in the facility and evidence given by other
detainees who were there paints a picture of a
horrific routine in the interrogation rooms of
Camp 1391. Within the framework of that routine
the interrogators of Unit 504 have no
compunctions about making use of extreme
measures in order to extract information -
information that in a large percentage of the
cases was not in their possession.

"I know that it was customary to threaten to
insert a stick," says T.N., an interrogator at
the facility, in testimony he gave to Military
Police investigators. "The intention was that
the stick would be inserted if the subject did
not talk ... I remember one case when something
in that style was done ... George was
interrogating one of the prisoners ... He
called in S. and me. We came into the room and
S. dropped his pants and remained in his
underwear or he made clicking noises with his
belt as though he was opening it ... S. did
this during the interrogation, when George told
[the prisoner] that he would be raped in the
ass ... I remember for certain that the
situation was threat of rape ...

"I want to add about that prisoner that he
arrived in the room naked, handcuffed and with
his head covered. S. and I were in the room and
one of us led him around the room and the other
held the stick next to his rear end, with
provocation and threat, that because he had
been caught lying the stick would be shoved up
his ass. When I say the stick was moved around
next to his rear end, the idea was to touch his
bottom with the stick and maybe even to shove
it next to the rectum so he would think we were
really going to stick it in."

Dirani's complaint, along with other testimonies
about what was going on in the interrogation
rooms of Camp 1391, opened a Pandora's box in
the army. George's line of defense was clear:
The system, he said, abandoned me; everything I
did was done with authority and authorization.
Everyone knew, everyone gave their backing, and
now everyone denies it all. To reinforce his
case, George brandishes a petition that was
signed by about 60 reserve officers and
soldiers of the unit, in which they say it is
wrong for George to have to pay a personal
price for using working methods that were
standard in the unit for many years.

What, according to George, did he in fact do
with authority and authorization? He denied the
rape and the abuse with the stick, but
confirmed many details that were reported by
Dirani and other prisoners. For example, the
fact that they often stood naked while being
interrogated. The State of Israel also denied
the rape charge in its response to Dirani's
suit, though in the legal hearings the
representative of the State Attorney's Office,
Yael Tennenbaum, confirmed that "within the
framework of a Military Police investigation
the suspicion arose that an interrogator who
questioned the complainant threatened to
perform a sexual act on the complainant." The
denial notwithstanding, George was dismissed
from the career army, in which he had served
for nearly 20 years, by order of the IDF's
judge advocate general. He claimed the system
was trying to silence him and the episode and
filed a petition to the High Court of Justice
to be reinstated into service. The petition was
rejected.

Today George sits at home, declining to talk
about the case. But stains that will not soon
be erased continue to hover in the skies above
Camp 1391. Another example is the testimony of
Ahmed Ali Banjek, a Lebanese citizen who was
brought to Israel and interrogated in the
facility on suspicion of smuggling an
anti-helicopter missile into the former Israeli
security zone in southern Lebanon. Banjek was
convicted on the basis of his confession but
afterward submitted an affidavit to the
military court in Lod stating that the
confession had been extracted under torture. He
said he had been beaten with a wooden stick
between the legs, forced to sit on a wooden
stick until it penetrated into his body, made
to drink coffee mixed with ashes from
cigarettes and force-fed with large amounts of
onions and water.

In a rare judgment, the military court in Lod,
under the president of the court, Lieutenant
Colonel Elisha Caspi, found in April 1998 that
"a certain doubt remains as to whether it can
be asserted with the certainty required in a
criminal trial that his statement was made by
the defendant and signed by him." In other
words, the court did not reject Banjek's
account of the horrors that occurred in the
interrogation rooms of Camp 1391, and he was
released.

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