Palestinian teen threatened during interrogation: Father

Ramallah, April 9 (IANS) The Palestinian father of a 17-year-old activist jailed for slapping and shoving a heavily armed Israeli soldier said on Monday that his daughter was psychologically and physically threatened by Israeli interrogators.

Bassem Tamimi, the father of Ahed Tamimi, presented a video to members of the press documenting the then-16-year-old's interrogation, which was carried out without the presence of lawyers or her parents, Efe news reported.

"During the first 10 days of interrogation, Ahed was subjected to tactics that do not comply with the international or humanitarian law," Bassem Tamimi said before showing the video.

He reported that the interrogation involved mental and physical harassment, isolation and constant transfers between cells, including a small "cold cell" in the middle of winter.

"When my daughter was moved from one place to another, criminals took Ahed to threaten her," Bassem Tamimi said, without giving more details.

He added that the interrogators "tried many ways to coerce her and force her to speak, but she kept silent during the whole round of interrogations".

The footage showed the two-hour-long seventh round of interrogation held on December 26 in which she appeared impassive in a room while two male interrogators (a member of Israeli military intelligence and a police officer, according to her lawyers) asked her questions, sometimes aggressively and threaten to detain members of her family by name.

The two interrogators also made references to the activist's skin, hair and eyes and asked her questions that were out of place, the report said.

Ahed Tamimi is currently serving eight months in an Israeli prison as part of a plea deal and her mother Nariman, 42, also received an eight-month sentence for posting the video online.

The video showed the activist berating two soldiers inside her family courtyard, shortly after her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed's skull was fractured when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head with a rubber-coated bullet on December 15.

Mohammed survived the shooting but a third of his skull was later removed.

The extended Tamimi family has had a major role in the non-violent resistance campaign against the Israeli occupation in their West Bank village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah.

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