BEIRUT, 27 February 2004 — A Lebanese national who is suing Israel for over $1 million in damages, claiming he was raped during interrogation in an Israeli prison, said he would give any compensation money to humanitarian organizations.
Mustafa Al-Dirani was among hundreds of Arabs and Lebanese freed last month in a prisoner exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel.
Al-Dirani told a Tel Aviv court shortly before his release and return to Lebanon that he was sodomized by a soldier on the order of an Israeli intelligence major codenamed “George”, who left him shackled and soaking in excrement for almost two weeks.
Al-Dirani has brought a civil suit for six million shekels ($1.34 million) in damages for the 1994 interrogation. He said in an interview on Wednesday he would give away any compensation.
“I haven’t asked for money, it is the lawyer who did... I will clarify now that I am ready to give any money I get to humanitarian organizations and I don’t want a penny of it. I am not interested in the materialistic side,” he said.
An Israeli prosecutor dismissed the charges as having “no basis whatsoever”. According to security sources, “George” was suspended after Al-Dirani filed a complaint through his lawyer.
“My main concern was revealing the truth and also so that others don’t suffer what I have suffered and are not tortured the way I was tortured,” Al-Dirani said.
“There could be someone who was tortured the way I was but he didn’t dare to tell the truth so I wanted to say it even if it harmed me and my family,” he said.
Israeli commandos abducted Al-Dirani in 1994 in the hope of trading him for information on missing Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who bailed out over Lebanon in 1986, at the height of the country’s 15-year civil war.
Al-Dirani’s group, Amal, captured Arad. Al-Dirani told interrogators he had handed him over to Iran, but later said the confession was false and forced out of him.
Al-Dirani said he might take his case outside Israel.
“Now that I am out of there, dealing with the case will be different from what it used to be when I was a hostage and my situation allowed me to raise a case there.”
Asked whether he might move the case to international courts he said: “If we find it useful, yes.”
“I don’t think the Israeli court will be brave enough to rule... because I believe the torture issue was not an individual act. If the court rules then I believe it will affect people in the leadership in Israel,” he said.
Israeli security sources said Al-Dirani was interrogated in Facility 1391, a secret prison reserved for top-priority foreign captives. The Supreme Court is expected to consider an Israeli rights group’s appeal to shut down Facility 1391.
