SHANE MCLEOD: Human rights lawyers have lodged a report with the United Nations Committee Against Torture with serious accusations of abuse of Palestinian children by Israeli forces.
The organisation, Defence for Children International, has collected more than 100 pages of evidence from the affidavits of minors it says have been beaten, threatened or coerced into signing wrongful confessions.
Israeli authorities defend their right to detain children who are a security threat. They say the treatment of Palestinian minors in custody is in accordance with international law.
Middle East correspondent Anne Barker reports.
MAHER BANI MIFLEH: As you can see it goes from here.
ANNE BARKER: Maher Bani Mifleh pulls up his trouser leg to show me his knee. There are two scars where a bullet has gone in one side and out the other.
He and his cousins, he says, were walking to a swimming hole near the West Bank town of Beita when Israeli soldiers began shooting. He says for no reason.
(Maher Bani Mifleh speaking)
"We were trying to go to the pool and suddenly a military car was there," he says. "We tried to escape and run so they started shooting."
Defence lawyers say they're increasingly alarmed at reports about the ill treatment of children by Israeli soldiers, police and interrogators. Earlier this year another 15-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by soldiers near the town of Hebron.
His lawyer, Khaled Quzmar says the boy had once been jailed for two months for throwing stones, but this time he'd committed no crime.
KHALED QUZMAR: I feel that he was shooting by wrong.
ANNE BARKER: "He was wrongly shot," he says. "He wasn't a prisoner. If he'd done something wrong, he would have been tied to the hospital bed and placed under guard. But he wasn't."
The Israeli Defence Force refused to be interviewed about either incident, despite numerous requests from the ABC. All it would say is that sometimes mistakes happen that are unintentional.
But an official military statement says, quote:
EXCERPT FROM MILITARY STATEMENT: The events described are currently being examined by the office of the Military Advocate General.
ANNE BARKER: Every year nearly 700 Palestinian minors as young as 12 are prosecuted in Israeli military courts. Hundreds are currently in jail. Nearly two thirds of those charged last year were accused of throwing stones at soldiers or Israeli settlers, a crime that can carry 20 years in jail.
Yet the organisation Defence for Children International, or DCI, which represents many of them in court, says very often minors are arrested who've done nothing wrong at all.
Its lawyer is Gerard Horton.
GERARD HORTON: Someone will have thrown stones at a bypass road or the wall or some army facility or a settlement. The army will then come into the nearest village to where that incident occurred and start arresting children.
ANNE BARKER: Gerard Horton says arrests are usually made in the dead of night as a form of intimidation or deterrence.
GERARD HORTON: We have a number of cases where children have woken up at two in the morning with an M16 assault rifle at their head, their hands are tied with plastic ties very tight behind their back, they're blindfolded. Generally they're not told why they've been arrested or where they're being taken to.
ANNE BARKER: The Israeli Defence Force defends its policies on the arrest and detention of Palestinian minors. In its statement to the ABC it says:
EXCERPT FROM ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCE STATEMENT: Rock throwing is a serious offence, placing others at significant risk and endangering both the public and regional security. The same certainly applies to attempts at stabbing a soldier. Offenders of either violation must bear appropriate consequences.
ANNE BARKER: But lawyers say, despite what the IDF claims, Israel's treatment of such minors does violate international conventions. DCI says youngsters in custody are usually denied a lawyer till after they make a confession.
Often the confession is made under coercion or even torture. Many, it says, are forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they can't understand.
Recently it says another 15-year-old boy accused of throwing stones reportedly had car jumper leads attached to his genitals under threat of electrification unless he confessed.
Lawyer Khaled Quzmar says such abuse is common.
(Khaled Quzmar speaking)
"From experience I can say that most children arrested are tortured according to the definition of torture," he says. "When we talk about torture, it's physical and psychological."
Now, a DCI report to the UN Committee Against Torture has documented a litany of alleged abuse. Of the cases it examined, it says 69 per cent of minors were beaten or kicked during interrogation. Two thirds were arrested at home between midnight and 4am. Ninety-two per cent were blindfolded and 14 per cent were placed in solitary confinement.
The IDF says claims of violence towards a child or an adult can be raised during the trial or in a complaint to the Criminal Investigations Division of the Military Police. But it defends its treatment of minors.
EXCERPT FROM ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCE STATEMENT: The military court considers the dual needs of punishment and deterrence on the one hand, and the individual circumstancesof each defendant on the other. The defendant's youth constitutes a significant factor in the consideration of rock-throwing cases but detention is often unavoidable, even for a minor.
ANNE BARKER: Maher Bani Mifleh's family is one of the very few that have considered legal action against Israeli security forces.
Gerard Horton says the vast majority have no faith in the system or fear a revenge attack if they sue.
GERARD HORTON: In the last eight years or so I think around 600 complaints have been filed against Israeli security interrogators. And there hasn't been a single criminal investigation.
ANNE BARKER: DCI says one simple measure, the video recording of interrogations, could help protect children as well as prevent wrongful claims against their interrogators.
This is Anne Barker in Jerusalem for PM.
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