Landau Commission

In 1986 the head of the GSS, Avraham Shalom resigned after being accused of attempting to frame a senior IDF general for the murder of two Palestinian prisoners killed after the hijacking.

In 1980 Azat Naffso, an IDF Lieutenant and member of Israel's 2,000-strong Circassian community from Kfar Kanna, had been convicted by a secret court martial of transmitting information and explosives to "hostile parties" and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Israeli state television quoted "Senior Shabak (GSS) figures" as saying that Naffso was subject to procedures identical to those "in hundreds of other cases.

"[5] Under immense pressure from the judiciary the Government set up a secret three man Commission of inquiry headed by the President of the Supreme Court Moshe Landau.

The "Commission of Inquiry into the Methods of Investigation of the General Security Service Regarding Hostile Terrorist Activity" was established on 31 May 1987.

"[8] but that a "dilemma" arose about revealing the methods of interrogation since it would "appear to the court as violating the principle of a person's free will, and thus causing the rejection of the confession.

"[9] They found that the GSS "simply lied, thus committing the criminal offence of perjury" and that "false testimony in court soon became the unchallenged norm which was to be the rule for 16 years.

"[10] In 1982 a written "guideline as to the nature of the lie to be told" with regard to "method of physical pressure" was issued by the highest GSS authorities.

"To put it bluntly, the alternative is: are we to accept the offence of assault entailed in slapping a suspect's face, or threatening him, in order to induce him to talk and reveal a cache of explosive materials meant for use in carrying an act of mass terror against a civilian population, and thereby prevent the greater evil which is about to occur?

"[18] And "It is true that strict care must be taken, lest a breach of the structure of prohibitions of the criminal law bring about a loosening of the reins, with each interrogator taking matters into his own hands through the unbridled, arbitrary use of coercion against a suspect.

In this way the image of the State as a law-abiding polity which preserves the rights of the citizen, is liable to be irreparably perverted, with it coming to resemble those regimes which grant their security organs unbridled power."

The Commission stated that the code was less severe than techniques used by the British army in Northern Ireland and followed the standards set down by the European Court of Human Rights in 1978.

"[20] In 1968 the International Committee for the Red Cross issued a report on Nablus Prison, one of the IDF's detention centers in the recently captured West Bank.

It found: In February 1970 the United Nations Economic and Social Council issued a report which had two annexes containing evidence of the mistreatment of prisoners.

"[23] In 1972 the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, founded by Israel Shahak, issued a report on conditions in the Gaza Strip.

[25] In 1977 the London Sunday Times Insight team reported that torture was being used as a "systematic deliberate policy" in six detention centers, including a special camp at Sarafand.

"[28] Also in 1978 the American National Lawyers Guild claimed the following: beating of feet and sexual organs; burns by cigarettes; cutting body with razor blades; standing naked for long periods in hot or cold; drenching in hot or cold water; use of dogs; withholding food and blindfolding for long periods; insertion of bottles or sticks into anus; insertion of wire into penis; suspension from pulley; electric shocks.

[29] In 1984 International Commission of Jurists published a report by Law in the Service of Man called "Torture and Intimidation in the West Bank - The case of al-Fara'a Prison."

Virtually all our sample were subject to: verbal abuse, humiliation and threats of injury; sleep and food deprivation; hooding for prolonged periods; enforced standing for long periods, sometimes in an enclosed space, hands bound behind back and legs tied ("al-Shabah"); being bound in other painful ways (such as the "banana" position); prolonged periods of painful confinement in small specially constructed cells (the "closet" or "refrigerator") and severe and prolonged beatings on all parts of the body, resulting in injuries requiring medical treatment.

"[32] A 1995 official report by Miriam Ben-Porat, made public in 2000, showed that Shin Bet "routinely" went beyond the "moderate physical pressure" authorised by the Landau Commission.