[Peace-discuss] Letter in Chicago Tribune Magazine

[David Green]

4. Letter to ed in Chicago Tribune Magazine 

Posted by: "Carol Herzenberg" carol at herzenberg.net   
Terrorism and torture

Published October 1, 2006

Ron Grossman's article on the trial of Muhammad Salah
("The case of the 
globe-trotting grocer," Sept. 3), the Chicago-area
resident who is accused 
of sending money to Hamas, does not refer to what
Salah suffered during 53 
days of Israeli interrogation as torture, but the
descriptions that I have 
read in other reports cause me to regard it as such.

The statements that Salah made under duress while in
Israeli custody are 
the centerpiece of the government's case. Yet had
those statements been 
taken in America, they would likely have been
disallowed in an American 
courtroom.

At the request of prosecutors, the federal judge
closed the courtroom to 
both the public and the press during testimony by two
Israeli intelligence 
officers who had questioned Salah. I find it extremely
distressing that 
the American judicial system went to such lengths to
protect interrogators 
who may have been torturers instead of protecting an
American citizen who 
may have been victimized by them. We should do all in
our power to see 
that the judicial system acts in an open and just
manner.

CAROLINE HERZENBERG / Chicago


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