The Israeli authorities have denied claims that three Palestinian youths were tortured to death. Lara Marlowe sifts the evidence
Palestinian officials and media have accused the Israeli Defence Forces of torturing and mutilating three teenagers they killed on the night of December 30th. The official post-mortem report by Dr Abdul-Razak al-Masri, the coroner for the Palestinian Authority's justice ministry, indicates that the Israelis drove a tank over two of the boys, one of whom appears to have been alive at the time.
If reports of the atrocity are true, the deaths of Mohamed Lubbad (17), Mohamed al-Madhoun (16) and Ahmad Banat (15) mark a significant deterioration in the type of violence used by Israeli occupation troops against Palestinian civilians.
Since the story came to light, Western media have concentrated on Israel's seizure of an arms shipment in the Red Sea and the Hamas attack which killed four Israeli soldiers inside Israel this week. But in the Israeli-occupied territories, attention has focused on the three teenagers.
"They were tortured to death with knives," Leila Shahid, the Palestinian ambassador to Paris, alleged. An article published on the website of the Palestine Report on January 9th quoted the director of the emergency ward at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital as saying that there were "long deep gashes . . . most likely the doing of a sharp instrument such as a knife or axe" on Mohamed Lubbad's body, and that the other two bodies also had broken bones and long deep gashes.
The Israelis usually return the bodies of the Palestinians they kill to the Palestinian Authority within 24 hours. Three other young Palestinians who died that same night were left on the ground in Gaza. But the fact that the bodies of Lubbad, al-Madhoun and Banat were held for four days - during which they were autopsied at the Abu Kbir forensic centre in Tel Aviv - deepened Palestinian suspicions.
Contrary to Israeli law, the Israelis did not obtain a court order for the autopsies or ask permission from the boys' families.
The dead teenagers' families, who live in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City, grew worried when they did not return home and approached the Authority, Red Crescent and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which is affiliated with the UN organisation, Ecowas, and the International League of Human Rights Leagues. Only then did the Israeli army returned the corpses.
"It was horrible to see [THE BODIES]," said Raji Sourani, director of the human rights centre. "On one of them, the face is almost completely gone. You can see their bones; the flesh is in pieces."
The centre has appealed to the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Israeli occupied territories to investigate the killings.
Palestinian and Israeli sources agree that the three teenagers were walking in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, shortly before 6 p.m. on December 30th. They also agree that the Israelis opened fire on them, but that is where the versions diverge.
"At first, the Israelis said they were trying to get into a settlement. Then they admitted they were not," Mr Shahid said. "They were just walking in the street."
"These people were very young. They had no weapons," Mr Sourani said. "None of them had any political affiliation. None of the groups, like Hamas or Islamic Jihad, said 'They're our members'. We consider it an extra-judicial killing. They just shot to kill - in a Palestinian Authority area."
Lieut Col Olivier Rafovich, a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces, admitted the men were in an inhabited area of the northern Gaza Strip, but added: "They got close to an armoured personnel carrier [APC] in an area where we are facing a terrorist threat. It's a very narrow road and they got within a few metres of it. We observed them. In this area at this time, you don't go for flowers; you go to attack the Israelis. Three guys getting close to an APC; it's very suspicious."
Col Rafovich claimed the Israelis found two knives near the bodies. "All three were killed by one fleshette tank shell," Col Rafovich continued. But fleshettes - shells that embed hundreds of tiny nails in their targets - are anti-personnel weapons, banned for use against civilians.
"They were not civilians, they were terrorists," Col Rafovich said. "Three guys close to an APC with knives at night are terrorists." A few minutes earlier, the colonel had told me it was "twilight",just before 6 p.m.
Israel used fleshette shells widely in southern Lebanon in the 1990s, but only began firing the weapons in the Israeli-occupied territories after the second intifada started in October 2000.
"At first we thought [the fleshettes] were bullets," Dr Maj id Abu Ramadan, a British-trained ophthamologist and an official at the Palestinian ministry of health said.
"They look exactly like a nail, with a tapered head in the front and a heavy bulk at the end. When it flies, it rotates on itself. It leads to very severe tissue damage." The effect of the fleshettes can be guessed at from the clinical language of Dr al-Masri's report.
Ahmad Banat's injuries included "countless multiple irregular inlets and exits all over the body".
It is not clear whether the fleshettes or other weapons inflicted Mohamed Lubbad's wounds.
"Most facial bones were comminuted and fractured," Dr al-Masri wrote. "Comminuted" means pulverised.
"Most of the skull bone is missing," the report continues. "The brain is not there. The upper limbs have only severely comminuted bone and some tissue shreds remaining." All three deaths were homicides, the Palestinian coroner concluded.
Col Rafovich said he knew nothing about the autopsies performed at Abu Kbir.
The Palestinian coroner's post-mortem reported "evidence of mutilation prior to the post-mortem" in the case of Mohamed Lubbad and "mutilations unrelated to the inlets and exits" of shrapnel from the fleshette shell on Ahmad Banat's body. Both Lubbad and Banat had been run over or collided with "a heavy solid object"- doctors believe the Israeli tank.
Banat's left scapula (shoulder) was crushed by being run over and Dr Masri reported a "vital sign" that the injury occurred before he died.
"I asked Col Rafovich about the Palestinians' belief that the teenagers were tortured and/or run over by a tank. "I heard these allegations. I cannot tell you anything more.
"These guys were killed. When terrorists are killed, the issue is over. We don't deal with bodies."