Beware of "GEORGE" in Israel !

The militia leader, Mustafa Dirani, was kidnapped by Israel in 1994 and is to be released in a large-scale prisoner swap this week.

Yesterday, he told a Tel Aviv court that the Shin Bet security services kept him naked in an interrogation facility for a month as they questioned him around the clock, demanding the whereabouts of airman Ron Arad.

The interrogators alternately splashed him with hot and freezing water, shook him until he fainted, sodomized him and sexually assaulted him with a stick, he said. “I prayed that I’d die,” said Dirani. Israel officials did not respond to calls for comment.

Israeli and international human rights groups say Israel has routinely mistreated Arab security detainees during interrogation by depriving them of sleep, tying them up in painful positions and forcing them to wear hoods on their heads.

Dirani, 53, testified as part of his lawsuit seeking 6 million shekels ($1.3 million) in damages for the alleged abuse, which he said took place years before the Supreme Court ruling.

He limped badly and walked with a cane when he entered the Tel Aviv court room. He spoke only reluctantly and had to be coaxed into giving details about the alleged torture. He is scheduled to be released tomorrow as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

Israel accuses Dirani of involvement in the capture of Arad, who ejected from his plane over Lebanon in 1986 and remains missing. Israel says Dirani held Arad captive at one point and Israeli forces kidnapped Dirani in south Lebanon in 1994 as part of an effort to locate the missing navigator.

Dirani said troops broke down the door to his house at 2:30 a.m., pointed guns at his son and threatened to kill him if Dirani did not tell them where Arad was. “I told them I knew nothing about this,” he said.

Dirani said he was then taken to a facility in Israel, stripped naked, shackled and brutally interrogated around the clock for a month by six people, including a particularly sadistic man known only as George. George threatened him and cursed him,” Dirani said.

One day, George brought a uniformed soldier nicknamed Kojak into the room, Dirani said. The soldier dropped his pants and George told Dirani the soldier would sodomize him if he did not talk, he said.

Days later, Dirani was shackled and pushed down onto a bench, he said. “I couldn’t see or resist… I was raped by the soldier. He said he would rape me, and he did,” he told the court. “Two or three days later they started raping me with a police baton,” he said. “It’s impossible to describe the pain. I yelled to high heaven.” The interrogators took him to a doctor to stop the bleeding, he said. They also forced him to drink castor oil, which made him incontinent, and made him wear large diapers as his only clothing.

In the courtroom, Dirani identified George from a photograph he was shown.

A video cassette given to several news outlets yesterday showed an unnamed interrogator talking about working with George, who dealt with all prisoners under interrogation, including Iranians and Syrians.

“I remember one instance that I still feel until today, which makes me shudder, in which a baton was used — not for hitting,” he said, according to the Ynet Internet site. “Even in the field, George did what he wanted, in front of my eyes and the eyes of everyone else.”