by Ali Abunimah
The European Union is
illegally funding Israeli torturers and must stop, a group of prominent
international legal experts has concluded.
They say
that the LAW-TRAIN program violates EU regulations and international law
because one of the participants, Israel’s public security ministry, “is
responsible for or complicit in torture, other crimes against humanity and war
crimes.”
LAW-TRAIN began in May 2015
with the ostensible aim of “harmonizing and sharing interrogation techniques
between the countries involved in order to face the new challenges in
transnational criminality.”
It is funded through an EU
research program called Horizon 2020, which
has also channeled millions of dollars to
Israel’s arms industry.
Extensive use of torture
LAW-TRAIN involves Israel’s Bar-Ilan
University, the Israeli
public security ministry, Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven, the
Belgian justice ministry, Spain’s Civil Guard paramilitary police and the
Romanian police. Its advisory board includes Cornelia Geldermans, a prosecutor
in the Netherlands.
Portugal was originally
involved, but pulled
out last year in the face of mounting public opposition to Israel’s role in
the EU program.
LAW-TRAIN is scheduled to run
until April 2018 and half of its nearly $6 million budget will go to the
Israeli participants.
“The use of torture by Israeli
interrogators has been extensively documented in the international and Israeli
press and confirmed by international investigators and by Israeli interrogators
themselves,” Michel Waelbroeck, the author of the legal opinion and a member of
the Institute of International Law, stated. “In June 2016, the UN Committee
against Torture denounced Israel’s use of torture and its illegal, abusive
techniques during interrogations by its police and prison staff.”
The opinion is endorsed by 25
international legal experts and jurists, including former UN human rights
investigators Richard
Falk and John
Dugard, and Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, a former Dutch deputy prime minister
and former director general at the European Commission.
Israel has a well-documented
record of torture, including against
children, and has systematically
failed to investigate complaints of abuse.
Illegal funding
In February, hundreds
of Belgian academics and artists urged their government to end its support
for LAW-TRAIN, and questions
have been raised about the project in the European Parliament.
Human rights organizations
from Palestine, Belgium and Spain have also written
to EU officials expressing concern about the support for Israeli entities
engaged in torture.
As opposition to LAW-TRAIN
grew, the European Commission, the EU’s executive bureaucracy, conducted
an evaluation by an “independent expert panel” that concluded the program
had “Good to excellent compliance” with EU laws, including the European Charter
of Fundamental Rights.
But the legal experts say that
the review ignored key EU regulations that ban funding to individuals or
organizations that engage in “grave professional misconduct” such as torture.
The legal experts conclude
that because Israel’s public security ministry is “guilty of grave and
continuing breaches” of European and international prohibitions on torture, the
EU funding is illegal.
But far from taking action to
hold Israel accountable for torture, Carlos Moedas, the EU’s head of research, recently
visited Israel to celebrate its involvement in Horizon 2020.
Protest in France
While top EU officials tighten
their embrace of Israel’s regime of occupation, apartheid and
settler-colonialism over Palestinians, European citizens are continuing to urge
an end to such complicity.
Activists from BDS France held
this protest outside the pavilion of the Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems at the Paris
Air Show on Saturday.
The protesters can be seen in
the video staging a “die-in” and holding a banner denouncing Israel for testing
its weapons on Palestinians.
The protesters called for an
arms embargo, an end to military cooperation with Israel and support for the
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.
Elbit is a major manufacturer
of drones that Israel has used
to kill Palestinian civilians. It was contracted
by the Obama administration to provide surveillance technology along the US-Mexico
border.
Elbit has also been a big
recipient of European Union funds.
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