Amnesty Slams Israel, Palestinians for Abuses

In its annual report on human rights worldwide, the London-based group said Israeli security forces killed at least 20 Palestinians in "suspicious circumstances" last year.

"Torture and ill-treatment continued to be officially sanctioned and used systematically during interrogation of security detainees" in Israel, it said, adding that information and confessions obtained through torture were then accepted as evidence by the country's courts.

Israel arrested 1,200 Palestinians for alleged security offenses and issued administrative detention orders -- which allow for imprisonment without trial or access to lawyers -- against 270 Palestinians.

The report said that more than 1,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons were sentenced in military trials that did not meet international standards of fairness, in part due to the use of evidence obtained through torture.

At least 40 Lebanese were also being held in Israeli jails, 21 of whom had already finished their legal sentences or were imprisoned without trial.

Israel's supreme court admitted last year that some of the Lebanese detainees committed no offenses and were being held as "bargaining chips" to obtain the return of Israeli soldiers missing in action in Lebanon.

Another 140 Lebanese, including women and children, were held in the Khiam detention center controlled by the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army in southern Lebanon, it said.

The Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat arrested at least 450 people for political reasons during 1998, many of them after "grossly unfair trials" by security courts, it said.

Another 500 people arrested for political offenses in previous years also remained in Palestinian Authority jails, it said.