Camp 1391

Camp 1391 or Unit 1391 or Facility 1391 was an Israel Defense Forces prison camp in northern Israel for "high-risk" prisoners. It was run by Unit 504. The existence of the prison was unknown to the public before 2003, and most information about it remains classified, though Israel's supreme court ordered the release of some information about the jail.

Camp 1391 is situated in a Tegart fort on route 574 between kibbutz Barkai and kibbutz Ma'anit in northern Israel and less than an hour's drive from Tel Aviv.

The location of the camp was accidentally discovered by Israeli historian Gad Kroizer, who found a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect while researching old British police buildings. On the map were 62 British police compounds in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where Arab and Jewish militants against the British occupation were interrogated. One camp, "Meretz", did not appear on any modern Israeli maps. In 2004, Kroizer published an article in an academic journal, mentioning the prison location in a footnote. Some days later he received a phone call from Israel's military censor asking why the article had not been submitted for inspection. According to The Guardian, the facility "had been airbrushed from Israeli aerial photographs and purged from modern maps."

Camp 1391 is operated by the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps, rather than by Shin Bet.

HaMoked, a major Israeli human rights organization, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to challenge the legality of the facility.

Dubbed "the Israeli Guantanamo", the secret was kept in such a manner as to be even unknown to Prof. David Libai, Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin's government and member of the secret services related ministerial committee. According to Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who specialises in advising Palestinians, "Anyone entering the prison can be made to disappear, potentially forever, it's no different from the jails run by tinpot South American dictators."

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