'State caused Dirani interrogator emotional harm'

In NIS 6m. suit, former IDF interrogator submits psychiatric report showing emotional harm after state threw him "to the dogs."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Dirani_311 (photo credit: Reuters)
Dirani_311
(photo credit: Reuters)
“Captain George,” the fictitious name for a former state interrogator, submitted a psychiatric evaluation to the Tel Aviv District Court to strengthen his claim that he suffered emotional harm from the way he was forced to leave his position in the security apparatus.
He claims partial disability and NIS 6 million in damages from the way the state handled claims made against him for his conduct of the interrogation of Mustafa Dirani.
The former interrogator claims that the state abandoned him despite the fact that the lawsuit filed against him was groundless.
Dirani, who was released as part of a prisoner exchange in 2004 and is now in Lebanon, is suing the state for NIS 6m. 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.
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, and not Captain George, 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].”
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 the terrorist group in October 2000, together with kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.
Joanna Paraszczuk contributed to this story.