Israel is running secret detention center: Report

By: Ahmad Hammadi

JERUSALEM: The Associated Press has learned that Israel's Shin Bet security agency has detained Palestinian prisoners incommunicado for weeks at a time at a secret detention center which location Israel refuses to mention as well as that who is being kept there but hints foreigners are among the prisoners.

According to detainees they are blindfolded and kept in black, windowless cells. “On the moon,” they are told when they ask where they are.

Human rights groups say a secret detention center would be in violation of international law. In a June 9 response to a Supreme Court petition filed by the HaMoked human rights group over missing detainees Bashar and Muhammed Jodallah, the state's attorney confirmed the existence of the center, known as facility 1391.

The response said Shin Bet only used the center for a brief period when Israel's incursion into the West Bank in April last year resulted in hundreds of Palestinian arrests and a shortage of detention places. Since then, all Palestinian prisoners have been moved, and the center is used, if at all, for special circumstances, for detainees who are not residents of the territories.

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