Did you know the UN had an anti-torture committee? You’d think that maybe they’d be checking out the handiwork of places like Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, various South American dictatorships, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, and, gee, pre-2003 Iraq. But no, of course not. The UN anti-torture committee knows who the real villain is: Israel.
The UN Anti-Torture Committee Friday called on Israel to release information on any secret detention facilities and to close such interrogation centers. The state has so far refuted claims that such centers exist.
During their examination of Israel, the 10 experts presented allegations that Israel was running a “Facility 1391” in an “undetermined location within Israel which is not accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross or detainees’ lawyers or relatives.”
In conclusions published Friday, the committee said Israel should “investigate and disclose the existence of any other such facility and the authority under which it has been established.”
In a written reply, Israel denied that it was operating the facility or using it to interrogate suspects.
“For several years now, the ISA (Israel Security Agency) is not involved in any way in operating that facility, and no ISA interrogations are conducted there. Furthermore, since September 2006, the facility has not been used for detention,” said the Israeli authorities.
So, the UN says Israel should disclose the existence of the facility. Israel says it’s not being used for detention, let alone torture. And the UN says, “Nuh-uh!”
Business as usual. Ignore the real criminals, and go after Israel. Because you have to justify that budget to American taxpayers, somehow.
Can we please get out of the UN now?
And yet, those intransigent and stiff-necked Israelis keep rejecting UN monitoring of any proposed peace agreement. Quarrelsome folk, aren’t they?