Monday, June 2, 2008
Flying pigs or bizarro world? Gaza: Investigate Abduction, Torture by Islamic Jihad - Hamas Has Duty to Prosecute Serious Abuses:
Hamas authorities in Gaza should investigate the recent abduction and apparent torture of three men by the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should hold accountable any individuals responsible for serious abuses.
On May 20, 2008, the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced that it had arrested three men who they claimed were part of a larger "cell" working with Israeli security services. A statement said that: "The cell that was uncovered by the Security Apparatus of the Al-Quds Battalions includes very dangerous collaborators who were recruited by the Occupation in the 1990s."
An Islamic Jihad spokesman who gave his name as "Abu Ahmad" told Human Rights Watch in a telephone interview that the group held the men in a private detention center and interrogated them for close to two weeks.
"An armed group like al-Quds Brigades has no legal right to arrest, detain, or interrogate suspects," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. "As the de facto political authority in Gaza, the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya needs to show it won’t tolerate vigilante abuse."...
It would be nice if groups like HRW would spend more time on despotic regimes and less time on functioning countries that already have their own internal checks allowing reform and redress -- like Europe, the US and Israel. That would be too difficult I suppose. I had always thought that was what they were supposed to be about. Have they changed in recent years, or was my view of them simply misinformed all those years ago?
