10.11.2014 - 19:51 [ Nation ]

Will Rasmea Odeh Go to Prison Because of a Confession Obtained Through Torture?

(4. November) Rasmea Odeh was one month old when her family fled from their home in Lifta, a village outside Jerusalem. By February 1948, the Zionist army had destroyed Lifta and expelled its residents as part of its strategy to take control of Jerusalem. Odeh grew up as a refugee in Ramallah in the West Bank, which she saw come under occupation by the Israeli army in 1967.

When she was 21, in 1969, Odeh was arrested in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers at her home, and for twenty-five days her interrogators tortured her. She was beaten from head to toe with sticks and metal bars; her body, including genitalia and breasts, was subjected to electric shocks after she was forced to watch a male prisoner tortured to death in this very way. All the while, she was told she would die if she did not confess. But it was not until they brought in her father, threatening to force him to rape her, that she agreed to sign a confession stating that she had helped orchestrate two explosions in West Jerusalem that killed two civilians. Even then, her torturers raped her with a thick wooden stick.