Israeli soldiers and police routinely detain and arrest Palestinian children. Saeed Qaq APA images

An Israeli interrogator allegedly forced a Palestinian child to sign a confession after threatening him with sexual violence, according to a signed affidavit collected by Defence for Children International - Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine).

As I reported earlier today at DCI-Palestine’s website, Othman S., 14, was arrested by Israeli forces in occupied East Jerusalem on the morning of 25 November 2013. Along with his brother, he was taken to the Russian Compound, an Israeli interrogation center in Jerusalem:

During the interrogation, an intelligence officer accused him of throwing a stone and then a Molotov cocktail at a police car and, when Othman would not confess, the officer threatened to sodomize him. “(The interrogator) then brought a broomstick, about 1.5 meters (6 feet) long, from one of the corners and threatened to shove it up my bottom,” Othman said, adding that the interrogator said to him: “You want me to shove this stick up your ass so you’ll feel pain and tell me the truth?” The interrogator also insulted Othman’s mother and sister and warned him that he would “demolish my home if I did not talk,” he said.

The boy was subsequently forced to sign a prepared confession in Hebrew, a language that he does not understand.

Othman is not the first Palestinian child to be threatened with sexual abuse by Israeli interrogators. An August 2013 report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem documented several cases of abuse, including sexual threats, in the Etzion police station in the occupied West Bank.

Between August 2009 and July 2013, according to the report, 12 children testified that “the interrogator threatened them or female relatives with sexual assault, such as rape or genital injury.”

Please read the rest of my news update at DCI-Palestine’s website.