With Abbas's clampdown, reports of torture grow

By Adam Entous and Alastair Macdonald

HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president, are rounding up suspected Islamist activists and allegations of torture and abuse of legal procedure are mounting sharply.

"They shouted 'You're Hamas! Tell us what you're up to!' as they were hitting me," one man recounted to Reuters of an ordeal last month in a Palestinian prison in Hebron. He spoke, too, of being forced to hang or stand for hours in "stress positions."

The 25-year-old factory worker, among many to have spent time in Israeli jails on suspicion of militancy for the Islamist movement, was too afraid of the security forces to be named.

But his story is one rights monitors and Western officials say they have been hearing more often lately as a potential new crisis approaches next month in the rumbling factional warfare between Hamas, masters of the Gaza Strip, and Abbas, whose Fatah movement dominates the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Rights monitors logged four times as many torture complaints in November as had been the previous monthly average this year.

Mohammed al-Hammouri says his son Amjad, a dentist who ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 2006 on a Hamas ticket and was arrested at his Hebron surgery in October, remains in a jail run by Abbas's intelligence service over a month after the Palestinian High Court ordered his release.

"What can I do, if they ignore even the High Court?" the elder Hammouri said.

The Palestinian government said in a statement that it held no political prisoners and praised security forces for tackling challenges posed by both the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and by Hamas, which it accused of crimes in Gaza.

"As for torture,... the matter is being exaggerated and is totally untrue," it said. "We are determined to banish torture and we do not sanction it if and when it happens. We also remind you that interrogation is a natural part of any detention."

A senior aide to Abbas, Saeb Erekat, said: "President Abbas has always declared his full commitment to the supremacy of the law and to human rights codes. I think this will be brought to his attention to see if an investigation should be pursued."

Hamas says that on January 9 it will stop recognising Abbas's right to be president, arguing his term is up. Abbas reads the law differently and will stay put. Given the bloodshed last year when Hamas, which had won the 2006 parliamentary election, routed Abbas's men in Gaza, the argument can seem academic.

But it provides a context for new conflicts on the ground.

Since the violence of 2007, each side has accused the other of persecuting and imprisoning its activists. But concern Hamas will mount a challenge to Abbas in the West Bank in January may help to explain the wave of new arrests there, diplomats said.

Hamas, which like Fatah has thousands of activists jailed in Israel, says 700 of its members are being held in the West Bank. Western diplomats say 400 Palestinians have been arrested in Hebron alone. The city is an Islamist stronghold but it is unclear how many of the detainees are Hamas members. Fatah says 100 of its members are currently being held by Hamas in Gaza.

ALLEGED ABUSES