ReliefWeb

January 20th 2003 at 2:30 p.m. Israeli soldiers stopped a PRCS ambulance at Ma'ali Afrim checkpoint. The soldiers ordered the EMS team and patient out of the vehicle at gunpoint and ordered the medic to strip naked and stand in a garbage pile. When he refused to remove his underclothes or stand in the garbage a soldier held a gun to his head stating he would count to ten and if the medic had not followed orders by then he would shoot him. The medic again refused. All IDs were then confiscated and the ambulance was searched. After one hour, when the driver attempted to negotiate their release with the soldier, he was ordered back into the ambulance at gunpoint and verbally assaulted. After two hours and forty-five minutes, a superior officer returned the IDs to the PRCS team and patient, denied them permission to continue on route to the Jericho Bridge and ordered them to return to Nablus.
This sights a breach to articles (19, 24,25) of the First Geneva Convention, which guarantees the protection of medical units and establishments, and the protection of personnel, and a grave breach of article (50) of the First Geneva Convention which considers torture, inhuman treatment and causing willful suffering or serious injury to body or health unjustified by military necessity a war crime.