Camp 1391

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Camp 1391 is a controversial Israel Defense Force prison. The existence of the camp and its inmates was completely unknown to the public until 2004 and details of its nature are still not entirely clear.

The camp was accidentally discovered by an Israeli historian called Gad Kroizer. He stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect while researching old British police buildings. He found on the map 62 British police compounds in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arab and Jewish militants against the British occupation were interrogated. A camp called Meretz, did not appear on any of the modern Israeli maps. Kroizer started digging deeper and in 2004, he unveiled Camp 1391 to the public and the next day he got a phone call from Israel's military censor who wanted to know why the article had not been submitted for inspection. It is less than an hour drive from Tel Aviv close to the main road between Hadera and Afula in northern Israel. The HaMoked, an Israeli human-rights group, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to close it down.

According to Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who specialises in advising Palestinians, "Anyone entering the prison can be made to disappear, potentially for ever, it's no different from the jails run by tinpot South American dictators."

Dubbed "the Israeli Guantanamo", the secret was kept in such a manner as to be even unknown to Prof. David Libai, justice minister in Yitzhak Rabin's government and member of the secret services related ministerial committee.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the detainees were blindfolded and kept in darkened cells (as small as 1.25mx1.25m with a heavy steel door and black or red walls), and subjected to heavy torture to get them to talk. Mustafa Dirani, a detainee who joined the camp in May 1994, has filed a suit in Tel Aviv's district court for sexual abuse in the camp. The discovery of the camp has not been reported in the mainstream press in the U.S.

Visits from the Red Cross are not allowed and the prisoners are not told where they are, nor are their families or lawyers.