Israel’s Torture of Children - A Light Unto the Nations (Isaiah 42:6)

Solitary Confinement, Electric Shocks, Shackles and Handcuffs - How Israel Treats the Children of its Untermenschen

There was a time when Israel’s founders spoke of Israel as a ‘Light Unto the Nations’ a phrase that occurs more than once in the Book of Isaiah. Israel was held up as a moral example to the world.

What, one wonders, of the light that is currently being shone on Israel’s treatment of (Palestinian) Child Prisoners? The picture it reveals is not pretty. The brackets around ‘Palestinian’ signify that in the Occupied Territories, the treatment meted out to Palestinian children is entirely different to that of the children of Israeli settlers. But then who can seriously disagree with the fact that Apartheid is official policy on the West Bank? Whereas it is more hidden and concealed in pre-1967 Israel, on the West Bank the full level of repression is unleashed.

But today in Israel there is no talk of anything other than a satanic light. It is the light that Israeli soldiers shone in 1982 in order to enable the fascist squads of the Lebanese Phalange to seek out their Palestinian victims in the Sabra & Chatilla refugee camps.

But whereas the ‘leftist’ Zionists liked to ‘shoot and cry’ (they still killed Arabs, but at least they did it with tears in their eyes) the right-wing and religious Zionists are more honest. Arabs will only grow up to hate us, therefore it is permissible to kill them when they are young. Such is the Nazi logic that they imbibed with their mother’s milk.

Prime among these Judeo-Nazis is one Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who explained that:

“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

See AlterNet / Max Blumenthal, ‘How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews (with Video)

The following articles demonstrate the depths to which the Israeli state has sunk, the moral abyss of a state whose lineage was European fascism rather than a mythical Kingdom of David. The verse ‘Suffer ye little children come to me, and do not ye forbid them to come to me’ from St. Matthew takes on a wholly different meaning for the prison guards and military of the West Bank.

Children in plastic handcuffs that bite into the skin, irons and shackles. The use of electric shocks against children and dogs eating their food from a child’s head, coupled with threats of rape. It is difficult to believe that the Israeli state could sink any lower.

The debate on this issue, following a visit of 4 MPs to the West Bank is printed below and with it the wholly vacuous response of Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt. Did he issue a strong condemnation? Threaten sanctions? Instead this gutless example of the Tory’s moral fibre bleated on about how ‘We are not all motivated against Israel and we are making remarks that are in Israel's best interests."

Who cares what the best interests of the torturers are? It is besides the point. The only interests that count are the children who go through what is laughingly described as Israel’s legal system. And it is because child torture is now an approved practice (hence the opposition to video-taping interview) that many of are indeed ‘motivated against Israel’.

Tony Greenstein


Stone Cold Justice by John Lyons

The Australian 26 November 2011

Editor’s Note: This is a story that is not new to advocates and activists for Palestine, but despite all the efforts by Australian lawyer Gerard Horton during his five years at Defence for Children, International, to bring the shocking details of violations against children in Israeli prisons out into the open, the mainstream media has kept a stony silence. That is, until Saturday when senior journalist John Lyons from The Australian – not known for its sympathy to the varied and sustained human rights abuses endured by Palestinians – wrote a piece exposing the truth on Palestinian children in Israeli prisons.

It is always difficult to read about how any criminal justice system treats prisoners, especially these days of punitive excesses, but Israel’s contempt for the rights of child prisoners particularly, leaves one despairing of humanity and the law. John Lyons has certainly taken the first step into making this awful reality public and we hope to see much more of such honest reporting. The next step requires us all to act. Write to our Foreign Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd, MP Kevin.Rudd.MP@aph.gov.au and write to Australia’s ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner telaviv.embassy@dfat.gov.au (or to your own country’s representative) and insist that they speak out against these abuses and the use of military courts to prosecute and sentence Palestinian children.

Bear in mind that Jewish settler children throw stones, rubbish and excrement at Palestinians and often inflict injury, but the same law doesn’t apply. If settler children are ever charged with throwing stones at all, they would not be brought before a military court, but a civil one where they would receive full representation. They are also not considered adults until they are 18 unlike Palestinian children who are deemed “adults” at 16, although child prisoners can be as young as 13. Such is the clearly racist system that Israel operates.

Also, please write to the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict HE Radhika Coomaraswamy, One UN Plaza DC1 - 627 F New York, NY 10017, USA (Tel: +1 212-963-3178 Fax: +1 212-963-0807) and HE Ron Prosor, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, 800 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA.

Sonja Karkar Editor http://australiansforpalestine.com

Stone cold justice a Guantanamo Bay for kids

You hear them before you see them. The first clue that a new group of children is approaching is a shuffle of shoes and a clinking of handcuffs and shackles. The door to the courtroom bursts open - four boys, all shackled, stare into the room. Four boys looking bewildered. They wear brown prison overalls and they trail into the room where their fate is to be decided by a female Israeli army officer/judge, who is sitting at the bench, waiting. The look on the face of one of the boys changes to elation when he sees his mother at the back of the court. He blows her a kiss. But his mother begins crying and this upsets the boy. He begins crying too.

We're sitting in an Israeli military court which is attached to the Ofer prison in the West Bank, 25 minutes from Jerusalem. Mondays and Tuesdays are "children's days". Hundreds of Palestinian children from the age of 12 are brought here each year to be tried under Israeli military law for a range of offences. The majority are accused of throwing stones and, as the court has close to a 100 per cent conviction rate, almost all will be imprisoned for anything from two weeks to 10 months. Some will end up in adult jails.

Today, groups of children in threes and fours shuffle in; some cases last only 60 seconds, just long enough for the child to plead guilty and hear their sentence. Sitting in a room 50m away, more children wait. Despite their confessions, many insist that they did not throw stones or molotov cocktails, and the human rights group Defence for Children International estimates that about a third who pass through the system have either been shown or signed documentation in Hebrew - a language they cannot understand.

Inside the courtroom, the army's public relations unit wants the IDF guide to sit next to me to explain each case. I'm told I can quote him as "my guide" but not name him and we are allowed to photograph some of the older children but not the younger ones.

Nor will they allow us to photograph children handcuffed and shackled trying to walk… It's not surprising that Israel doesn't want this image out there - it would look uncomfortably like a Guantanamo Bay for kids.

Nor will they allow us to photograph children handcuffed and shackled trying to walk – “absolutely not,” my guide says. The army obviously realises that such a photo would be enormously damaging. After September 11 I'd seen images of alleged terrorists walking like this but I'd never seen children treated this way. It's not surprising that Israel doesn't want this image out there - it would look uncomfortably like a Guantanamo Bay for kids.

Several countries, led by Britain, are turning up the heat on Israel over the treatment of Palestinian children - not only the manner of their arrest and interrogation but also the conditions in which they're kept in custody. Sandra Osborne MP, part of a British delegation that recently visited the military court, said of the visit: "For the children we saw that morning, the only thing that mattered was to see their families, perhaps for the first time in months ... A whole generation is criminalised through this process."

Into this world has walked Gerard Horton an Australian lawyer. Horton was a Sydney barrister for about eight years and his practice included contract disputes, building insurance cases and employment matters. In 2006, while studying for a masters in international law, he volunteered for three months for an organisation that represented Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. He has worked there ever since.

"Sometimes the children are kept on the floor face down with the soldiers putting their boots on the back of their necks, and the children are handcuffed, sometimes with plastic handcuffs which cut into their wrists. Many children arrive at the interrogation centres bruised and battered, sleep-deprived and scared." The whole idea, he says, is to get a confession as quickly as possible.

During his five years at Defence for Children International Horton says the office has increased its evidence-gathering capacity and will only pursue credible allegations based on sworn affidavits. He takes me through the arrest process: 'Once bound and blindfolded, the child will be led to a waiting military vehicle and in about one-third of cases will be thrown on the metal floor for transfer to an interrogation centre.'

DCI has documented three cases where children were given electric shocks by a hand-held device and Horton claims there is one interrogator working in the settlement Gush Etzion "who specialises in threatening children with rape".

DCI has documented three cases where children were given electric shocks by a hand-held device and Horton claims there is one interrogator working in the settlement Gush Etzion "who specialises in threatening children with rape". Some cases contain horrifying allegations, such as this one from Ahmad, 15 documented by DCI, who was taken from his home at 2am, blindfolded and accused of throwing stones. "I managed to see the dog from under my blindfold," he says.

"They brought the dog's food and put it on my head. I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head. His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I was so scared my body started shaking ... they saw me shaking and started laughing ... Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was terrified."
They brought the dog's food and put it on my head. I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head. His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I was so scared my body started shaking ... they saw me shaking and started laughing ... Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was terrified."

Israel is under pressure to at least allow filming of interrogations. "We want interrogations of children audiovisually recorded," says Horton. "This would not only provide some protection to the children but would also protect Israeli interrogators from any false allegations of wrongdoing."

Australian diplomats have shown no obvious interest in the military courts despite our Ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner, being told about the treatment of children a year ago. She refused to comment on the situation for this story. Says Horton: "It is disappointing that of all the diplomatic missions in the region, Australia has been conspicuously silent on the issue of the military courts."

Horton says the military courts function as a system of control: "The army has to ensure that the 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in occupied territory go about their daily business without interruption from 2.5 million Palestinians... it is no coincidence that most children who are arrested live close to a settlement or a road used by settlers or the army."

He says it's an effective system; quite often the children emerge scared and broken. But there is little recourse. "Sometimes if there is a group of children who throw stones and the settlers or soldiers are not clear exactly who has thrown them, the army can go into a village at two or three in the morning and five or 10 kids get roughed up and it scares the hell out of the whole village," says Horton. He adds that when the army arrests children they usually don't say why or where they are taking them.

From 2001 to 2010, 645 complaints were made against Israeli interrogators; not one resulted in a criminal investigation.

Former Israeli soldiers have formed Breaking the Silence, a group that has gathered more than 700 testimonies about abuses they committed or witnessed. Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says the army sets out "to make Palestinians have a feeling of being chased". "The Palestinian guy is arrested and released," Shaul says. "He has no idea why he was arrested and why he was released so quickly. The rest of the village wonders whether he was released because he is a collaborator."

Fadia Saleh, who runs 11 rehabilitation centres in the West Bank dealing with the effects of detention, says: "Usually the children isolate themselves, they become very angry for the simplest reasons, they have nightmares. They have lost trust in others. They don't have friends any more because they think their friends will betray them. There is also a stigma about them - other children and parents say, 'Be careful being seen with him, or the Israeli soldiers will target you too.'

Dear All,

On 28 November 2011, the issue of Palestinian children prosecuted in Israeli military courts was raised in debate in the UK parliament. http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/situation-palestinian-child-prisoners- debated-uk-parliament Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards

Gerard Horton
International Advocacy Officer - Lawyer Defence for Children International – Palestine Section
Tel: +972 2 242 75 30 ext. 103 Fax: +972 2 242 70 18 Mobile: + 972 0599 087 290 Email: gerard@dci-pal.org

Richard Burden: [...] My final point is about child prisoners. We have already mentioned the prisoner swap that rightly led to the release of Gilad Shalit and of some 500 Palestinian prisoners. The second phase of that prisoner swap will take place over the coming weeks. But there are 150 Palestinian children in Israeli military detention. So far, none of those is scheduled to be part of that prisoner swap.

Several recent delegations to the West Bank and Israel—organised by the Britain-Palestine all-party group, which I chair, and other organisations—have been to the Israeli military courts where those children are tried. Like other hon. Members, I had already read the testimonies about how the laws applying to Palestinian children are different from those applying to Israeli children; about how Palestinian children are tried in military courts, but Israeli children, even in the occupied territories, are tried in civilian courts; about how many Palestinian children are given bail compared to how many Israeli children are given bail. But I was not prepared for the sight in a military prison—one of the most secure compounds I have ever visited—of 14-year-old boys shuffling in wearing leg-irons and handcuffs for their court hearings. All members of the all-party parliamentary group who were on that visit made the decision that we were not prepared to shut up about this. Something had to be done. Whatever one’s views on the occupation, on Israel and on the peace process, shackling 14-year-old boys is wrong. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

But I was not prepared for the sight in a military prison—one of the most secure compounds I have ever visited—of 14-year-old boys shuffling in wearing leg-irons and handcuffs for their court hearings.

Ann Clwyd: Earlier this year, I was invited by the United Nations to a conference in Vienna on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. It was the first time that I could remember the UN holding a conference with such a title. There were testimonies from people that made exactly the same point as my hon. Friend. Children are quite often charged without having a responsible adult present or legal representation. The stories that we heard were very similar to those he is describing now.

It is an absolute disgrace that many of these children are in prison simply for throwing stones.

Richard Burden: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The biggest number of accusations is for throwing stones. A range of human rights organisations, including Israeli human rights organisations as well as Palestinian and international ones, and the United Nations have amassed loads of evidence showing how children are visited and arrested in the middle of the night and painfully tied with a single plastic cord in violation of Israeli army procedures. The issue of how the children are interrogated and who is allowed to be present is a matter of real concern. Interrogations are not video recorded. Children continue to be denied bail in about 90% of cases, and many are detained in prisons outside the occupied territories in violation of article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention. Those things are wrong.

Even though I thought I knew a fair bit about child prisoners in Palestine, I came across something last week that astonished me even more. I spoke to some ex-detainees in Bethlehem. Most of them came from the town of Hebron or thereabouts. They recounted some of the things that my right hon. Friend has said, that I have said and that the UN has reported, but I wanted to pursue this issue of why they were shackled and had leg irons on inside a prison. I said to the young boys, “When did they put these leg irons on you? When did they shackle you?” They replied, “Before we went into the court and before we went into the prison.” I said, “You were detained, though. You were already in the prison, weren’t you?” They replied, “No, we were in the other prison.” Many of those children are held not in Ofer prison, in which they are tried, but in other prisons which could be on the west bank or in Israel itself.

The young man who was talking to me was held in Tilmond prison near Haifa and he said that that was where they put the shackles and leg irons on him. He wanted to talk to me about other things. He thought that his experience was quite normal. I said, “Hang on, how long were you in those leg irons and shackles before you got to the prison?” I thought that it would have taken one to two hours to drive to Ofer prison, but he said, “About nine hours.” At that stage, I thought that I was getting some exaggeration because it is nothing like a nine-hour drive between Haifa and Ofer prison, which is between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He said, “No, we don’t go straight there. We get picked up at about one o’clock in the morning and the prison transport takes us down to the Negev where we pick up some more from a prison there. It then takes us back to Ramleh where we have a break for the driver and then we go on to Ofer prison. It takes about eight or nine hours.” I asked the young boy whether he was shackled the whole time. He said, “Yes.” Other young men around the room nodded in agreement and said that that had happened to them as well. I asked the young boy where they were being held. He said, “We were in this kind of prison bus which had rooms in.”

I assumed that it was like prison transport with compartments. He said, “It was a bit overcrowded, but we just had to stay there with our shackles and leg irons.” I asked, “What happened if you wanted to go to the toilet?” He replied, “We just had to do it where we were.” This is the 21st century. Irrespective of our views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, are we honestly saying that those sorts of things should go on?

I know that the Minister and the Government are concerned about this matter. I welcome the work that both our ambassador in Tel Aviv and our consular-general in east Jerusalem have been doing to raise awareness of these and many other issues. There is another inquiry going on at the moment into the condition of child prisoners. This is an issue that must not go away because it is shocking to me and shocking to anyone who sees it. It is against the UN convention on the rights of the child and it is inhuman.

I have been raising these matters over a period of time —perhaps I have been a bit of a bore on the matter— but it is only in the past few days and weeks that we have seen a change in profile and a number of achievements. Israel has equalised the age at which a child is classified an adult—from 16 to 18. The age is now equal between Israelis and Palestinians, which is good. It would not have happened had it not been for the pressure that has been building up. The number of Palestinian children in Israeli jails is now 150; it was 164 a few weeks ago, so I think the Israelis are susceptible to pressure. Related links: Urgent Appeal - (UA - 5/11) - Prisoner exchange – Release of Palestinian children UNICEF appeals for release of Palestinian child detainees MEP De Rossa calls for release of Palestinian child detainees Detention Bulletin - Issue 22 - October 2011 The Australian: Stone cold justice Submission: The situation facing Palestinian children detained in the Israeli military detention system (July 2011)

By Leon Symons, December 9, 2010

MPs' challenge on Israel's child prisoners

Israel has admitted that some Palestinian children as young as 12 or 13 charged with criminal offences have been brought into court in handcuffs and leg irons.

The practice was brought to light by four MPs of the All Party Palestinian Group who visited Israel and the West Bank at the end of last month with lawyers from Israeli non-governmental organisation Defence of Children International.

One of the four, Sandra Osborne, the Labour MP for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, sponsored a debate on Tuesday morning in which she and her colleagues described what they had seen in Ofer military prison on November 29.

Mrs Osborne said: "At the end of four days of touring the Occupied West Bank our group arrived at the military court of Ofer in the West Bank. Army officers led child detainees into the military courtroom, their legs shackled, their hands cuffed, all kitted out in brown jumpsuits. Did soldiers feel threatened by 13- and 14-year-old boys?"

Seeing children being manacled in court was appalling

She put forward five recommendations to Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt, who was responding for the government. She said no child should be interrogated without a lawyer or member of their family being present; all interrogations to be audio-visually recorded; all evidence suspected of being obtained by torture should be rejected by Israeli courts and authorities; all allegations involving obtaining confessions by torture should be investigated, and no Palestinian child should be detained outside the parameters of the Geneva Convention.
A spokesman at the Israeli Embassy acknowledged that leg shackles were used as well as handcuffs.

"We have to remember that, although they may be juveniles, the suspects in question are being tried for severe crimes.
"Standard procedure in such a case, crucially regardless of whether it is Israelis or Palestinians in the dock, would be to ensure that they are not free to escape, or attack those who are accompanying them.
"It is also important to state that the restrictions are only in place on journeys to and from the court. However, once in a secure location such as the courtroom or a detention centre, there
are no such restraints."
Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington) asked Prime Minister David Cameron about the situation during Prime Minister's Questions last week. He said during the debate: "I didn't have any long-standing commitment to the Palestinian cause as such but I felt as a new MP I should see the evidence with my own eyes.

"To see Palestinian detainees was a shocking experience. I am a father of a 13-year-old and seeing children of the same age in fatigues and being manacled and chained in court was appalling and something I found difficult to come to terms with."

The two other MPs who were on the tour, Richard Burden (Labour, Birmingham Northfield) and Ian Lavery (Labour, Wansbeck) joined in the condemnation of the practice.

They also alleged that Palestinian children were regularly arrested during the night, physically assaulted, deprived of food and water, held in communicado for eight days, taken into Israel without their families' knowledge and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.

Alistair Burt said he would raise concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children and youngsters with the Israeli authorities during a visit he said was scheduled for next year.
Afterwards, he said that sometimes Israel needed to listen to people outside. "We are not all motivated against Israel and we are making remarks that are in Israel's best interests."

Last updated: 1:50pm, December 9 2010

Israeli internal security officers accused of “attempted rape” of a child prisoner

Thursday, 24 February 2011 11:30

Israeli internal security officers accused of "attempted rape" of a child prisoner. Israel holds a number of child prisoners in small rooms which restrict movement, sleep and exercise.
Lawyers from the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, have claimed that Israeli internal security officers from Shin Bet tried to rape a child prisoner at Etzion Prison, south of Bethlehem. The prisoner involved, a boy, gave his testimony to this effect, under oath, to the lawyers.

The Shin Bet officers are accused of stripping the boy and threatening him with rape in order to extract a confession. When he started screaming, the lawyers said that, “The officers stopped, before extracting the names of people who were throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces patrols”. The boy gave his own name and identified others under threat of further sexual assault.

The Ministry said that this is not unusual inside Israeli prisons. Child prisoners have their rights violated almost as a matter of routine, it said. Torture, beatings and abuse are commonplace, as is sexual abuse.

Israel holds a number of child prisoners in small rooms which restrict movement, sleep and exercise. Their relatives also face restrictions over visits while the children are held in detention.
According to the Ministry’s lawyers, most children are taken into custody by the Israelis following their arrest while playing in the street, on the way home from school or when their homes are broken into by police and soldiers. Human rights groups have confirmed the belief that child prisoners face psychological as well as sexual harassment from investigators. The number of Palestinian children in prison who are suffering from medical neglect has now risen to 30, added the lawyers; they are denied proper medical treatment and requests for specialists to visit them are usually refused by the Israelis.

Voices from the Occupation: Rasheed J. Detention
Posted on: 14 Dec 2011
Name: Rasheed J.
Date of arrest: 4 November 2011
Age: 16
Location: Haris village, West Bank
Accusation: Throwing stones

On 4 November 2011, a 16-year-old boy from Haris village, in the occupied West Bank, is arrested by Israeli soldiers and held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame interrogation centre for 13 days.

Two days before his arrest, Israeli soldiers came to Rasheed’s house when he was out. The soldiers told Rasheed’s father that his son must go to Zufin settlement on 4 November for questioning. On 4 November, Rasheed went to Zufin settlement as ordered. ‘Four soldiers immediately tied my hands behind my back with one set of plastic cords and tightened them up,” recalls Rasheed. “They also blindfolded me […] The soldiers put me in a military jeep and forced me to sit on the floor.” Rasheed reports that he remained on the floor of the vehicle inside the settlement for about five hours.

Approximately five hours later, Rasheed was transferred to another vehicle which transferred him to the Al Jalame interrogation and detention centre inside Israel. Rasheed’s hands and feet were shackled during the two hour journey. On arrival at Al Jalame, Rasheed reports being strip searched before being given a prison uniform and taken for interrogation. “I was forced to sit in a small low chair and my hands were tied to the chair,” recalls Rasheed. “An intelligence officer named ‘Jolan’ came to the room and started asking me general questions about me and my family. The interrogator said that I should cooperate and not try to deny anything because that would harm me. I kept sitting in the low chair for about two hours. They did not bring me any food or water, but they allowed me to use the bathroom,” says Rasheed.

About two hours later, Rasheed recalls being taken to Cell No. 36. “It was a very small cell and had a smelly mattress on the floor. It had two concrete chairs and a toilet with a nasty smell. There was a sink next to the toilet. There were two sources of artificial light in the ceiling; one of them was out of order and the other one was green. The walls were gray and rough. The cell had no windows, just gaps to let air in and out. They passed me food through a gap in the door. I was detained in Cell No. 36 for 13 days […] I was detained at Al Jalame for 19 days; 13 of which was in isolation in Cell No. 36,” says Rasheed.

Rasheed recalls being interrogated every day except Fridays and Saturdays. During these interrogations he was tied to a small chair. The interrogations lasted for about three to four hours. “The three interrogators asked me about preparing home-made grenades, but I never confessed. I confessed only to throwing stones because they interrogated me for long hours, during which time they kept shouting at me and threatening me. ‘You Arabs like to fuck camels and donkeys and go to brothels to fuck whores,’ one of them said to me. ‘You have no honour because your mother’s a whore,’ he said. "They would shout at me and spat on me so I would confess, but I never confessed except to throwing stones.”

After 19 days at Al Jalame, Rasheed was transferred to Megiddo prison, also inside Israel, in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits transfers out of occupied territory.

On 18 October 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture called for an end to the practice of solitary confinement as well as a complete ban on its use for juveniles. “Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause,” Mr. Méndez warned, “it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”

28 November 2011