Woman Offers Details of Israeli Detention Methods

— The news broadcast over Israeli radio this morning was stunning: The Israeli Army had arrested three women, calling them terrorists primed for suicide bombings. One of them was apparently the first Christian would-be suicide bomber.

But even as the reports were still being broadcast, the Christian suspect, Fida Misleh, 23, was already back home, having been taken to an army base in her pajamas, interrogated and released to catch a bus. Her father, Khalil Misleh, a gardener in a convent here, had been taken in and released with her.


"It was a joke," she said of the Israeli accusation, as she fielded telephone calls from alarmed friends. "But it was a painful joke."

A second woman was also released, Palestinians here said, but the third was apparently still being held tonight.

The army did not immediately explain the turnabout. "There was some intelligence about them being suicide bombers," an army spokeswoman said. "We don't have anything else on them at the moment."

Ms. Misleh's experience illustrates the high price charged to the innocent on both sides in this conflict, now dragging into its third year. Israeli officials say the army has no option but to act instantly on intelligence of possible suicide attacks, to protect Israel's civilians.

Ms. Misleh, sitting in her living room here below a row of icons, said she opposed such attacks. "I believe if you want to defend your homeland, this is not the way to do it," she said.

With the experience just a few hours old, the Mislehs provided an unusually detailed account of the detention and interrogation.

At 2 a.m., soldiers pounded on the door of Ms. Misleh's brother, Issa, who lives with his wife and two children in the family's old home. Mr. Misleh said the soldiers searched the house, then demanded to know if he had brothers or sisters.

Mr. Misleh said he told them he had three sisters, two of whom were married and a third, Fida, who lived with her parents.

Ms. Misleh said soldiers ransacked the house then blindfolded and handcuffed her and loaded her and her father into a jeep. "They were very tough and rude," she said. She said when she asked what was going on, the soldiers told her not to say anything.

When a soldier eventually removed her blindfold, she said, she and her father were in a small room with two other Palestinian women and their fathers. They were ordered not to speak, she said.

She said she was the first to be interrogated. Her questioner spoke excellent Arabic, she said, and typed her answers into a computer, watched by a female security officer: her date of birth, identification number, what she does for living. She is a secretary for a lawyer for Palestinian prisoners.

"They didn't ask me if I had plans to blow myself up, or if I'm involved in political activities," she said.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/19/international/middleeast/19MIDE.html