I documented the horrors of October 7 but colleagues watered it down, claims U.N. torture rapporteur

"United Nations special rapporteurs were ‘bullied’ into not signing a letter documenting allegations arising from the October 7 attacks, the global body’s special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has claimed.

Dr Alice Edwards said some colleagues sought to water down a January 2024 letter detailing allegations received by her office, with a ‘concerted effort’ to prevent aspects of the massacre being formally recorded by the UN.

In a conversation at UCL in London on Tuesday with barrister Adam Wagner KC, Edwards said only one other rapporteur ultimately signed the letter.

‘That letter is a set of allegations of what happened on October 7; it was only signed by the Special Rapporteur on summary extrajudicial killings and me,’ she said.

‘Some other special rapporteurs and working groups had wanted to sign on, but they also had been bullied by others not to sign on, and there was this concerted effort for this letter not to put on record some allegations that had been received.’

Edwards, whose term ends in July, said the final version was significantly weaker than her original draft.

‘There was a campaign to prevent that letter from going out. There were weeks of being bullied and deterred from writing it and telling me that everything in it was false,’ she went on.

‘All the comments of these individuals had been taken into account so the letter shrank considerably.’...

In December 2024, she undertook a self-funded trip to southern Israel to document October 7. ‘When something of that scale occurs and it is occurring in real time... it is important to be present and to investigate,’ she said.

She described October 7 as ‘an atrocious event’ and ‘one of the single largest abductions of individuals in modern history in one go’...

Edwards also visited the kibbutzim that had been attacked, met hostage families, including Mandy Damari, and reviewed footage filmed by the perpetrators during the massacre.

‘I understand I’m the only Special Rapporteur who has ever requested to go to the Israeli mission to see the video and the documented evidence,’ she revealed.

According to Wagner, who represented hostage families with British links, Edwards was ‘without a doubt’ the UN official who engaged most seriously with their concerns.

‘She was the only UN official who they feel ever reached out for them or did anything for them,’ he said.

The experience informed Edwards’ landmark report, Hostage Taking as Torture, which examines hostage-taking across conflicts from Colombia and Iraq to Ukraine, Iran and Nigeria.

‘What is common among these scenarios? It is the mistreatment of the individuals that is being used as leverage,’ she explained.

‘It is not only that they have an individual, it is the threat that they are being tortured. ‘That initial fear is very grave and then of course through the torment of that, being separated from families, being held in isolation, no proof of life of the individual for months and months on end and, in the case of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, being held in Unrwa schools, in tunnels, in mosques.’..."