Youth accused of vandalizing Latrun Monastery while under house arrest

Thursday, July 4, 18:23 At the close of several days of investigation the Rishon LeTzion Magistrate Court ordered two youths suspected of involvement with the Latrun Monastery vandalism and detained at dawn on July 2 released to house arrest..
The police suspected David Hai Hasdai, a resident of Beit El which is one hour’s drive from the Latrun Monastery, of involvement with vandalizing the monastery in September 2012 even though he was under house arrest under surveillance at the time. At dawn on Tuesday, July 2 he and another youth also suspected of involvement with the Latrun Monastery incident were detained at Hasdai’s home in Beit El. Later the same day the Rishon LeTzion Magistrate Court extended the remand of Hasdai until Friday, July 5, however a short time after the deliberation it became known to Adi Kedar, the Honenu attorney representing him, that at the time of the incident he was under house arrest under the supervision of his parents. Hasdai himself told Kedar before the deliberation that under interrogation he had given an alibi confirmed by his parents that he was under house arrest on the evening of the incident. Honenu notes that despite the law which obligates first and foremost that the investigation focus on the alibi of the suspect, the police choice not to do so. In light of the unequivocal information Kedar turned to the court and requested an urgent deliberation.
The court acquiesced and on Thursday, July 4 the Rishon LeTzion Magistrate Court ordered that Hasdai be released to his home after it became known to them that at the time of the incident he was under house arrest under the supervision of his parents. Hasdai was released to ten days of house arrest in addition to signing on bail.
Later in the day (July 4), the second suspect in the case, Moshe Auerbach, was brought to court. The police demanded an eight day extension of his remand.. The court rejected the demand and ruled that the investigation could be continued even while the suspect was not in remand and ordered Auerbach released to his parents’ home, where he would remain under house arrest for eight days. Subsequent to the ruling the police requested a delay in carrying out the decision until they could appeal to the district court.
In response to the court’s decision David Hai Hasdai’s father, Lieutenant Colonel (reserves) Moshe Hasdai, said that, “Our genuine enemy is Arab nationalist terrorism. There is no such thing as Jewish terror. It’s a fabrication of the media which assists our enemies and slanders us in front of the entire world. In fact, it is the media which demands that the security forces deal with nonexistent ‘Jewish terror’ as it demands that the State of Israel recognize the nonexistent Palestinian State. My son belongs to an idealistic group of youth who organized to protest the persecution carried out by the media. The group is a legitimate protest movement against the persecution of the right-wing nationalist sector and against turning the IDF and the other security forces into means of persecuting Jews. To our great sorrow, most of the sort of persecution, such as the case of my son, has no basis and it is a shame that the police does not bother to perform the most simple checks before they cast shame by accusations such as these.”