Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Canadian and Israeli Cases 583
reviewed the activities of the GSS and justified the use of psychological and
‘moderate physical pressure’ to obtain confessions. The report acknowledged
that since 1971 GSS agents routinely obtained confessions by the use of physical
and psychological pressure and then lied to the courts by claiming that such
confessions were given voluntarily. The Commission recommended that agents
who lied in court should not be prosecuted for it. The Commission Report revealed
that almost half of all interrogations result in no charge being brought
against detainees (i.e. they were released without charge unless they had
confessed).
The detailed content of Part Two of the Report has not been made public. It
outlined the interrogation techniques used by the GSS and gave agents operational
guidelines about the use of psychological and physical pressure to obtain
confessions. The Landau Report legalized the use of ‘moderate physical pressure’
to break down resistance from resistant suspects and made it unnecessary
for GSS agents to continue to lie about their methods of extracting confessions.
The reasoning behind the legal decision to allow ‘moderate physical pressure’
and psychological manipulation in order to extract confessions from Palestinians
was that, unlike ordinary criminals, terrorists are highly motivated to conceal
information from the interrogators as a result of ideological indoctrination and
the fear of reprisals from terrorist organizations.
About a month after the Landau Commission made its report in 1987, there
was a major Palestinian uprising (‘intifada’), which resulted in mass arrests.
Frequently there was insufficient evidence to justify detention and subsequent
court proceedings. In order to be able to successfully prosecute detainees the
GSS needed more confessions and began to use increasingly coercive methods
of extracting them, including torture (Cohen & Golan, 1991).
According to Cohen and Golan (1991), the GSS is responsible for security and
counter-intelligence within Israel and the occupied territories. It is accountable
directly to the Prime Minister. One of its functions is to apprehend and interview
people who are suspected of being involved in activities that endanger the
security of the State of Israel. A person arrested can be detained, in the first
instance, for up to 18 days without appearing before a court. A judge can authorize
a further extension. Detainees can be kept in isolation from their family
and solicitor for a period of two weeks, during which time they are usually
interviewed intensively. Many confess and subsequently make plea bargains.
Once a confession is extracted by the GSS they are handed over to police officers
who formally record the confession in accordance with the law and present
it to the court. If the detainee attempts to retract the confession made to the GSS
agents, he or she is sent back to the GSS for further interrogation. GSS agents
generally do not testify in court but if they do, they do so behind a screen and use
code names so that they cannot be identified. Prior to 1971 GSS interrogators
were not required to give evidence in court. However, in 1971 a fundamental
change occurred with regard to the legal admissibility of confession statements
because they began to become increasingly disputed by defence lawyers. As a
result GSS interrogators began to appear as prosecution witnesses in a ‘trial
within a trial’ (Landau Commission Report, 1989), also known as a ‘mini-trial’
(Human Rights Watch/Middle East, 1994).