JERUSALEM - The detention by Hamas of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is "cruel and inhumane" and may amount to torture, Human Rights Watch said on the third anniversary of his capture.
"Hamas authorities should immediately allow Sgt. Gilad Shalit of Israel to communicate with his family and to receive visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross," the New York-based HRW said.
"Hamas?s prolonged incommunicado detention of Shalit is cruel and inhumane and may amount to torture," the group said in a statement.
Shalit, then a 19-year-old corporal, was snatched by militants from Hamas and two smaller groups who had tunnelled out of Gaza on June 25, 2006, and attacked an army post, killing two other soldiers.
He is believed to be held somewhere inside the Gaza Strip, which has been run by Hamas since the Islamist movement violently seized power in the Palestinian enclave two years ago.
"Hamas authorities have no excuse for cutting off Shalit from his family and the outside world for three years," said Sarah Leah Whitson, who heads HRW's Middle East section.
"Punishing Shalit for grievances against Israel is unjust and unlawful," HRW said, adding that "the laws of war prohibit cruel and inhuman treatment of persons in custody."
Israel and Hamas have held months of indirect talks through Egypt on a prisoner swap that would see hundreds of Palestinian detainees set free in exchange for Shalit, but no deal has been struck.
Hamas has repeatedly rejected requests by the ICRC to visit Shalit.
The rights group also said that Israeli authorities have repeatedly detained Hamas members without charge in the West Bank in arrests related to the Shalit case.
"It?s time for both Israel and Hamas to stop destroying lives and families by using the other side?s detainees as bargaining chips," Whitson said.
One of the sticking points in the prisoner swap negotiations is the demand prisoners involved in violent attacks be included in those released in exchange for Shalit.
But an opinion poll issued on on Thursday indicated that 69 percent of Jewish Israelis support the release of Palestinian prisoners who have been directly involved in violent attacks as part of the deal. Twenty eight percent are against, according to the poll published by YNet News.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said they believed Shalit would be released within a year, 19 percent said there was little to no chance of seeing him freed by next year and eight percent said they did not believe he would ever be released.