A former IDF interrogator who ran the investigation against Lebanese terrorist
Mustafa Dirani filed a NIS 5.5 million lawsuit against the Defense Ministry in
the Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday, claiming that he has suffered damages as
a result of Dirani’s rape allegations.
Dirani, who was released as part
of a prisoner exchange in 2004 and is now in Lebanon, is suing the state for NIS
6 million in damages, claiming that while in administrative detention in Israel,
interrogators had raped him, sodomized him with a club, kept him naked for weeks
and humiliated him in an effort to extract information about missing IAF
navigator Ron Arad’s whereabouts.
RELATED:
Report: IDF doctor says Dirani was raped
Court rejects state appeal to cancel Dirani's damages suit
The interrogator, whose identity has
not been revealed and who is known only by his nickname “Captain George,” served
as an officer in Unit 504 of the IDF’s Intelligence Division and was appointed
to the investigation against Dirani.
According to the lawsuit, filed by
attorneys Efi Nave and Hila Bodik- Kochman, the state deliberately concealed one
of the 47 tapes of Dirani’s interrogation. That tape allegedly shows that the
commander of Captain George’s unit was the person responsible for interrogating
and pressuring Dirani while the latter was naked, the lawsuit
claims.
Captain George’s lawyers further argue that their client was
harmed following Dirani’s allegations, which resulted in his employment in Unit
504 being terminated.
Nave told Channel 2 on Sunday that the state had
“thrown [Captain George] to the dogs after years of concealing tapes showing
that the unit commander is the one who interrogated Dirani and threatened him,
and not [Captain George].”
Captain George’s civil lawsuit comes after the
Supreme Court accepted a request by the state earlier this month for a further
appeal hearing over Lebanese terrorist Mustafa Dirani’s NIS 6 million damages
suit against Israel.
A majority Supreme Court decision in July
dismissed
the state’s appeal against a 2005 Tel Aviv District Court ruling that allowed
Dirani to go ahead with his lawsuit against Israel. Dirani filed the
lawsuit in the Tel Aviv District Court in 2000.
When the state appealed
that ruling, asking for a further Supreme Court hearing, Deputy Supreme Court
President Eliezer Rivlin agreed that an expanded panel of justices will review
the question of whether Dirani should be allowed to proceed with his lawsuit
against the state. The state has argued that the court should dismiss Dirani’s
lawsuit outright in accordance with Anglo-American law, which prohibits enemies
of the state residing in hostile countries from suing the state.
Dirani
is a former leader of Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist group Amal, whose forces
captured IAF navigator Lt.-Col. Ron Arad in October 1986 during a mission to
attack PLO targets near Sidon in Lebanon. In 1994, Israeli special forces
captured Dirani in Lebanon, believing he had personal knowledge of Arad’s
whereabouts.
Dirani was released in 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange
with Hezbollah, despite a High Court petition by Arad’s family to try to prevent
his release. In return, Hezbollah returned the bodies of three IDF soldiers
killed by Hezbollah in October 2000, together with kidnapped Israeli businessman
Elhanan Tannenbaum.