U.S. Accused of Supporting Israel's Detention of Aid Workers

Associated Press May. 16, 2002

An American relief worker jailed in Israel for a week accused the US government of supporting Israel in what she believes is a crackdown on humanitarian aid workers.

Dalell Mohmed, executive director of the Dallas-based Kinder-USA, a new charity created to provide aid to Palestinian children, called her eight days in captivity an "excruciating experience" during which she was held in a rat-infested cell and shackled at the wrists and ankles during long interrogations.

She said she also believes a fellow American jailed the same day may have been tortured.

State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said she needed more information before she could comment.

David Douek, a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, denied Israel has a policy of keeping humanitarian workers away from the Palestinian territories.

"Our problem is that there are times when people enter our country under the title of humanitarian aid worker and they don't follow the law," he said, adding that Mohmed and Dr. Riad Abdelkarim were jailed as suspected terrorists.

The Interior Ministry acknowledged preventing some 2,000 people identifying themselves as humanitarian aid workers from entering the country and expelling about 50 others.

Abdelkarim, who is one of Kinder-USA's board members, was arrested May 5 as he prepared to fly home from Ben Gurion International Airport. The 34-year-old physician remains jailed at the Petah Tikva Detention Center outside Tel Aviv, where his lawyer and family say he is staging a hunger strike.

Mohmed, who was released Monday, said she was arrested as she sipped tea at her hotel in Jerusalem on May 5.

The Indiana native of Lebanese descent had been in the country for three days to register her newly formed organization, distribute humanitarian aid, conduct a medical assessment and hire local staff, she said.

She said didn't have a chance to distribute or spend the $70,000 she had wired to Israel to cover her expenses.

Mohmed, 47, said she and Abdelkarim visited the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Beit Sahur, and Beit Jala together the day before their arrests.

The pair were both members of the Holy Land Foundation, which had its assets frozen in December after US President George W. Bush's administration charged it as being a front for the militant Palestinian organization Hamas.

Mohmed adamantly denied that their membership in the organization was to blame for her arrest and Abdelkarim's continued detention without charges, and she called on others to rally for his immediate release.

"We owe it to him as American citizens to do everything we can to bring him home," she told a news conference.

Mohmed also said she believes Abdelkarim may have been tortured by his interrogators, saying she heard him crying out in pain.

"I heard his voice. He said, 'I'm leaving. Stop, stop, stop this now."'

Douek said it was unlikely Mohmed could have heard Abdelkarim because female detainees are kept a great distance from their male counterparts.

"For her to be able to hear it is virtually impossible, even if she had radar ears," he said. "I wasn't present, so I can't comment specifically, but I can say the facilities are totally separate."

Mohmed said she heard Abdelkarim's cries while she was in an interrogation room, not her cell.