Study: Both Hamas and Fatah guilty of human rights violations

[Behind the Aegis]

Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah have both carried out serious human rights abuses over the past year, including arbitrary arrests and torture, according to a report on the bitter power struggle between the groups.

Human Rights Watch, in the report released on Wednesday, cited a pattern of politically motivated arrests, mock executions and severe beatings in detention centers run by Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction in the West Bank.

It faulted the United States and other donors, who have bankrolled Abbas's Palestinian Authority and Fatah-dominated security forces, for "not paying adequate attention to the systematic abuses by those forces."

Hamas, which receives support from Iran and other Islamist allies, routed Fatah in the Gaza Strip a year ago, seizing control of the coastal territory after months of fighting that killed hundreds. Abbas and his Fatah-led security forces still hold sway in the West Bank.

Abbas's Interior Ministry said arrests by West Bank forces were in accordance with Palestinian law and that it does not condone "some individual practices" during interrogation.

more...

HRW--Palestinian Abuses in Gaza and the West Bank

[LeftishBrit]

1. Disgusting and tragic

There are also reports and statements from Amnesty International

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/10/200852511592749892.html

and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, quoted with concern on both sides of the IP divide

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3548506,00.html

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9725.shtml


and varioua other organizations


www.arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com/2008/04/palestinian-torture.html

www.phrmg.org/Fatah%20and%20hamas%20abuses%20since%20June%202007%20report%20_2

[bemildred]

2. Great organization, Human Rights Watch.

They really call them like they see them, don't kowtow to anyone.