Jewish arson suspect cracked by Shin Bet

At least one Israeli is thought to have confessed to an arson attack that killed a Palestinian baby and his parents.

TOPSHOT - A blindfolded and handcuffed man is tied upside down to the frame of a bed as a group of Israeli right-wing activists stage a protest in a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem on December 27, 2015 depicting what they say are the methods used by the Israeli intelligence services to interrogate suspected Jewish extremists over the July 31 firebombing on the home of a Palestinian family in the West Bank village of Duma killing a toddler and both his parents. Israel's defence minister said on December 15 there was still not enough evidence to try the Jewish extremists who firebombed the Palestinian home. Signs on the back ground read in Hebrew: L: “Jews dont torture Jews”; R: “Dont stant on the blood of your friends” . AFP PHOTO / MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP / MENAHEM KAHANA

After three weeks of interrogation, at least one Israeli is thought to have confessed to an arson attack that killed a Palestinian baby and his parents.

The suspects, arrested on ­December 3, have not been identified, but one of their lawyers has accused the Shin Bet of torture, saying that his client was beaten and deprived of sleep.

Such methods are used mostly by Israel’s security service on ­Palestinians. The Jewish detainees were likely to have studied a manual with tips on how to ­endure a Shin Bet interrogation.

The suspects are accused of setting fire to a house in Duma, a village outside Nablus, in the early hours of July 31. Ali Dawabsheh, who was 18 months old, died after relatives were unable to pull him from the burning home. His parents, Reham and Saad, died later from their injuries. The only survivor was their son Ahmad, who was four.

Security officials said the ­detainees, Jewish men in their teens, were members of the hilltop youth, a gang of several hundred extremists who have been linked to attacks on Palestinians and their property.

They are hard to convict, partly because they come prepared. Many of them have consulted a handbook written by Noam Federman, once affiliated with the Kach party, which is banned in ­Israel as a terrorist organisation.

Accused of attacks on Palestinians, he spent hundreds of hours in interrogation rooms. However, most of the charges against him were dropped.

Federman advises fellow ­nationalists to ignore a summons for as long as possible and to choose their words carefully under interrogation. Detainees should spend their free time in prayer or studying. “Every person goes to reserve duty or to the army, and that is how you should regard arrest, too,” he wrote.

Much of the handbook is ­devoted to explaining how the Shin Bet uses informants to trick detainees. In one case, a prison janitor offered to pass notes ­between two suspects, only to turn them over to authorities.

Other detainees have been shown forged newspaper articles claiming their friends had ­confessed to a crime. “There have been cases in which the Shin Bet brought in a well-known radio announcer and faked news broadcasts,” he wrote.

The Shin Bet has denied that it tortured the Duma detainees. It said, however, that they were being treated as “ticking time bombs”, a legal classification that allows the agency to “manhandle” prisoners. In has used the designation to keep Palestinian detainees in darkness for lengthy periods and to deprive them of sleep with deafening music.

The detainees’ manual has been circulated widely among the far right — a suspect’s wife once brought it to court with her — though is not the only obstacle to prosecuting Jewish extremists. They lead isolated lives: some do not even carry mobile phones, often a key source of evidence.

Ninety per cent of Palestinians confess to the Shin Bet, even though the agency’s interrogation methods are well known to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Those groups are designated as terrorist organisations, giving Israel scope to detain suspects indefinitely and search their homes under military law. The hill top youth are not designated as such.

The Times