In June and July 2009, HaMoked sent out complaints to various official agencies, regarding the demeaning and ill treatment Palestinians had undergone while in the custody of the Israel Prison Service (IPS). The complainants were arrested by security forces in late 2008 and early 2009, and were all transferred to the Petah Tikva detention and interrogation facility, which is under the IPS control. HaMoked appealed, inter alia, to the chief medical officer of the IPS, to receive the complainants’ medical records. At the end of a negotiation process – in which HaMoked was required, inter alia, to provide the reasons for requesting a copy of the medical records, and the grounds for demanding the complete records – the chief medical officer decided to allow HaMoked's request and hand over the records.
At the elapse of nine months in all, since the 17 requests were sent; complete medical records were delivered in only a single case, as required by law; in the other cases, there is no medical information from the period close to the arrest, in which the complainants were held by the military (although the military asserted that the medical materials of that period were transferred to the IPS); one case excepting, the medical records transferred from the Petah Tikva detention facility were incomplete. HaMoked, therefore,
petitioned to the High Court of Justice on June 16, 2010, demanding to receive the medical records in their entirety.
HaMoked's petition asserts that the disclosure of incomplete and partial records, that do not show the full scope of medical treatment given throughout the period requested – defies the letter and spirit of the law. Furthermore, the absence of medical information for the period in which the complainants were held in the interrogation facility – where, according to their affidavits, they were subjected to demeaning treatment – is dismaying.