Anti-torture team to visit refugee camps in Gaza
A five-member team of an international anti-torture group arrives today in Gaza where it is to investigate reports of ill-treatment in refugee camps which were raided by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the group announced yesterday. According to Dr Maria Piniou-Kalli, president of the Copenhagen-based International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) – an umbrella group with over 200 centers worldwide that is partially funded by the European Union and the United Nations – the team of experts plans to visit Jenin Hospital and refugee camps in the area. The IRCT official, who will head the mission, noted that, during their four-day visit to the area, they will also meet with Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader and a trusted lieutenant of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who was arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Ramallah. «According to our schedule, we are to meet with Barghouti on Saturday in Ramallah,» Dr Piniou-Kalli told Kathimerini’s English Edition in a phone interview from Athens. She acknowledged, however, that their scheduled visits are subject to change, as Israel may decide at the last moment to deny access to previously permitted areas. The arrest of Barghout has further complicated the mission by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region, hampering any efforts to hammer out any agreement for a truce and revive peace talks between the two sides. Israel accuses Barghouti of planning and financing terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer accused him of turning Fatah’s militia into «the most murderous of the terrorist organizations, committing most of the recent attacks against Israel.» The Palestinians have denied any connection between Barghouti and the attacks, saying he is an official of the political wing of the Fatah movement, while Arafat has demanded his immediate release if there is to be any peace talks in the future. The IRCT team will also visit the West Bank town of Jenin, one of a few Palestinian-controlled areas that saw the heaviest fighting after the IDF met fierce resistance by Palestinians, particularly in the Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians claim that as many as 500 people were killed during the Israeli army incursion, while Israel plays down the incident saying that no more than 100 people lost their lives in the fighting. No death toll has been independently confirmed yet. Dr Piniou-Kalli stressed that the visit by the IRCT team will include the Jenin Hospital and possibly the Jenin refugee camp, where they will conduct interviews with survivors and record individual cases with the help of local Palestinian doctors. The IDF had denied medical and aid groups access to Jenin, and only recently allowed limited number of medical personnel to visit restricted sections of the city. Reports by news agencies and international medical groups indicate that a number of Palestinians are still buried under the rubble of the refugee camp which was leveled by the IDF. UN agencies estimate that the 3,000 Palestinian refugees who were living in the camp are now homeless. IRCT officials will also travel to Jerusalem to meet with Red Cross administrators, who have grown frustrated by Israel’s refusal to grant access to ambulances to enter combat areas and care for the wounded. In several instances, Israeli troops fired shots at Red Cross ambulances, endangering the lives of the organization’s medical staff, which the group strongly protested.
