August 26, 2002
The son of the first known Palestinian woman to be executed as an Israeli
collaborator says gunmen tortured him.
Bakir Khouli says he eventually invented a story about his mother’s
involvement in a militant’s death.
Ikhlas Khouli, a 35-year-old mother of seven, was shot dead on Saturday after
being seized from her home in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. Her 17-year-old
son has black and blue marks on his body which he says were made by
electrical wires during the hour-long torture.
He said: “They accused me of helping Israeli intelligence. When they
started beating me with this wire, I confessed and invented a story.”
A spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked to the Fatah
movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, says the militia seized Khouli
from her house on Friday.
She was taken to a deserted building where the spokesman says a
videotape was made of her confession that she had spied for Israel.
She was executed as a lesson to others who would consider collaborating with
Israel, he says. He says Khouli admitted she had recruited her son Bakir to
assist her.
Bakir says he told his torturers that he informed his mother of the whereabouts
of militia leader Ziad Daas, who was killed by Israeli forces on August 7. But he
says he made up the story to avoid further torture.
An Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader says his group is forced to employ torture.
“This is the only way you can get confessions from such people who betray
their people,” he said.
