From McClatchy:
They called it “The Bus” and it marked the beginning of days, weeks, even months of brutal interrogation at the hands of the nascent Palestinian government.
After being rounded up by Fatah forces, Hamas men were blindfolded and shackled to a line of uncomfortable, low chairs while their captors blasted “dirty” music to soften their psychological defenses.
Then, one by one, they were beaten, questioned and thrown in cells.
“Torture by the Israelis was less than what they did here,” said Hassan, a 46-year-old high school physics teacher who would give only his first name. He said he was held by Fatah for 59 days in 1996.
For Hamas members, the gutted prison bloc in the back of the Gaza City headquarters of the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service was their Abu Ghraib.
It was here that the seeds of the rivalry with Fatah were planted a decade ago. And it was here last week that Hamas broke the spirit of Fatah forces and sealed its military victory.
As soon as the compound fell, onetime inmates started turning up to visit the reviled prison bloc.
Among the first was a man who called himself Abu Essam, a stout, bearded, 54-year-old colonel with the Palestinian Authority National Security Services. He said he spent two years inside these cells.
At first, Abu Essam was hired to oversee the interrogations in 1994, soon after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat triumphantly returned to Gaza to build the foundations for a future state.
When it became clear that he was reluctant to use harsh methods, he was thrown in a cell himself for six months.
Abu Essam’s arrest was part of a prolonged Fatah crackdown on Hamas and its leadership, many of whom spent time in this jail.
The prison was then overseen by Mohammed Dahlan, the young Fatah leader and Gaza Strip enforcer charged with building the security system from scratch.
Hamas members said Fatah interrogators tortured them and shaved their beards to humiliate them.
It’s hilarious when I think that the so called international community is upset Hamas stormed the torture chambers where Dahlan and his men used to hold torture orgies for hours, days and weeks for Palestinian resistance fighters and dissidents. Smashing those cells and compounds is a “coup against legitimacy”? I really hope some of those Western diplomats would spend some time in Fatah’s torture chambers as detainees (don’t worry there are still plenty of those facilities in the West Bank) and then will see how keen they are for this “legitimacy” they are talking about!