Israeli Shooting Report Challenged
Israeli news reports said Friday that three Palestinians may have been killed in custody, not shot to death by soldiers at a roadblock as the military reported.
Reports carried by three daily newspapers and army radio conflicted with the official version of a shooting Oct. 1 outside a refugee camp in the occupied Gaza Strip.
An army spokesman, reached by telephone, denied the reports and stuck by the official statement that the men were shot at the roadblock outside Boureij refugee camp after refusing orders to halt.
A wave of unrest began in Israeli-occupied Arab territories after the Oct. 1 shooting. Eight Palestinians and two Israelis have been killed in the violence.
Stories Friday in the newspapers Maariv and Yediot Aharonot and an article published by Haaretz on Wednesday said the men may have died after torture before or after the roadblock incident.
Methods used by the Shin Bet secret service, which usually handles questioning of Palestinian suspects, were called into question last year in the case of two bus hijackers killed in custody in 1984. Authorities initially said they died when soldiers stormed the bus but later admitted that the Palestinians were beaten to death.
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