Israeli agents pressure Palestinian patients
Published:Monday | August 4, 2008 | 9:39 AM
A human rights group has claimed that Israeli security agents are putting pressure on some Palestinian medical patients to become informants.
Physicians for Human Rights said it has documented at least 30 cases of people from Gaza being denied treatment for not providing information.
The Tel Aviv-based group said this breaches international law, but an Israeli official has dismissed the claims, saying patients were only questioned as a security measure.
The report said that Palestinian patients have become an accessible and important target for the General Security Services, for the purposes of recruiting and gathering information.
The group cites cases in which patients were summoned for questioning and others where patients did not come to a crossing for fear of being arrested.