By Samer Khuwayera & Hanadi Dwaikat, IOL Correspondents

NABLUS , May 20 (IslamOnline.net) – A Palestinian female freed from Israeli detention said more than 15 fellow Palestinian women were raped by Israeli interrogators to force them to confess to charges leveled against them and collaborate with the Israeli intelligence.

"Israeli investigators and intelligence officers keep video tapes of the raping to blackmail the female detainees," she told IslamOnline.net, requesting anonymity.

"I have been sexually abused and photographed. When I tried to travel to Jordan after my release and Israeli intelligence officer dumfounded my with the humiliating photos."

She asserted that this techniques has been used for years by the Israeli interrogators against Palestinian detainees.

"They have used this raping techniques before my detention and continue to use it until today," said the Palestinian woman who spent nine years of her life in Israeli detention.

She asserted that Palestinian women shy away from reporting such "disgrace" due to the sensitivity of the conservative Palestinian community.

The Israelis also, she added, threaten to widely circulate the rape images if any of us take her complains to the public or the press.

The sexual abuse practices are not restricted to detained Palestinian women alone.

In a phone all from an Israeli jail, a Palestinian man told IOL he has not been allowed to put on any cloths since his detention eight months ago.

"I haven't worn my clothes all this period. They (Israeli guards) searched continue to search such around the clock and if we resist they torture us."

Replica

" Israel , through the Shabak, violates the international convention against the torture which stipulates that all parties should take the necessary legislative, administrative and judicial measures to prevent torture under its jurisdiction," said a Palestinian human rights researcher.

Shin Bet, also known as the General Security Services or Shabak, is Israel 's domestic security agency.

"The convention clearly states that parties should not exploit extraordinary circumstances, such as war, a threat to wage war or domestic political instability, as pretexts for torture," Sameh El-Sayehn told IOL.

He asserted that the U.S. soldiers' sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees in Abu Gharib was simply "a replica of a long-running Israeli practice".

"Shabak has more than 25 different torture techniques to extract confessions from Palestinian detainees," El-Sayehn said.

"The nudity technique used by the Americans against Iraqi detainees is a long time Israeli favorite but unfortunately pictured never surfaced to expose the barbarism and brutality of a country bragging about being a democracy oasis."

The pictures  of grinning U.S. soldiers posing by a heap of naked Iraqi men revealed last month sparked worldwide outrage that has continued to dog the administration.

U.S. President George W. Bush had denounced the misconduct as "abhorrent, shameless and unacceptable" and apologized  for it.

In a damning report presented to the U.S. administration in February, U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba found numerous "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Gharib.

El-Sayeh indicated that Israeli guards "undress Palestinian female detainees and tie them to beds for long periods."

The situation in men prisons is not less humiliating, added the Palestinian researcher.

"Palestinian men are held naked in front of each other and Israeli soldiers. Those who refuse to take of their clothes are brutally beaten."

At least seven thousands Palestinians, including scores of women, are held by Israeli occupation forces in detention centers and jails.

Mustafa Dirani, a Lebanese recently freed from Israeli detention, told a Tel Aviv court Tuesday, January 27, "I was raped by the [Israeli] soldier. He said he would rape me, and he did."