Minor threatened in detention center

Sunday, April 29, 2018, 18:31 The approximately 15-year-old minor who had been under an order prohibiting him from meeting with an attorney was threatened by investigators and undercover policemen over the weekend during interrogation. Honenu: “The methods of interrogation from the Kfar Duma detentions are being used again. Human rights are being trampled.”
“You won’t be taken out of here alive.” “You are a sex offender – we will hurt you.” With those statements and other threats, interrogators and undercover policemen from the Central Unit of the Jerusalem Police attempted to extract a confession from the minor that he had damaged Arab property.
The minor, who does not have a criminal record, was prohibited from contacting his attorneys and his family from the morning of Thursday, April 26 until the following Saturday night. During that time he was held at the detention center of the Ariel Police Station and placed in a room with adult prisoners who turned out to be undercover policemen planted in order to extract a confession from him.
The undercover policemen, one of whom feigned a mental illness, threatened the minor for many hours, shouting at him that he was suspected of sex offenses and that they intended to injure him if he did not tell them what the crimes were that he had supposedly committed, and thereby clear himself of the suspicion that he was a sex offender. Thus the police attempted to extract from the minor a confession of crimes which he had not committed. Honenu reports that similar methods were used during the interrogations of detainees in the Kfar Duma case.
Shortly before Shabbat began, the minor was taken for interrogation by an interrogator from the Central Unit of the Jerusalem Police and told, “You won’t be taken out of here alive.” On Saturday night, after Shabbat, the order prohibiting the minor from meeting with his attorneys was lifted.
“Today [Sunday] the court ruled that the likelihood of there being a reasonable suspicion is low. This ruling only increases our impression that the law enforcement authorities have lost all restraint in this investigation in an attempt to obtain a confession at any price,” said Honenu Attorney David HaLevi, one of the attorneys representing the minor. “During the deliberation it turned out that the police were completely unaware of what justifies issuing an order prohibiting meeting with an attorney and had made a ‘mistake’ when they issued the order. It had been absolutely forbidden for them to issue the order to my client
“The police gave the attorneys the run-around and attempted, at any price, to prevent us from advising our client, who is a 15-year-old minor without a criminal record. As if that were not enough, the police went so far as to attempt to justify their illegal actions with a fabrication that, during a court deliberation, rendered our client no less than ‘a member of a terrorist organization’ even though he had never been investigated for that crime.
“During his remand my client was placed with adult detainees, one of whom feigned mental illness, and was threatened by them in various ways, such as accusing him of committing sex offenses and then insinuating that therefore he is not interested in revealing the charges against him. Each one of these action is serious in and of itself. We will consider out steps and take every step necessary against whomever is responsible for this conduct, which should concern every Israeli who fears for citizens’ rights. Woe to us that the Israeli Police allow themselves to take actions such as these against a minor who does not have a criminal past.”
ֹHonenu: “Unfortunately the methods of interrogation used during the Kfar Duma detentions are being used again. Human rights are being trampled, and one can only dream of the provisions of the Youth Law being upheld. Everything has been done to extract a confession at any price and against the detainee’s will. It is as if someone marked the target and now all means are valid. Who will stop this insanity?”
At the courthouse, during the wait for the deliberation to begin. the police detained the minor’s brother. After a short interrogation on suspicion of obstructing a policeman in the line of duty, the brother was released. At the end of the deliberation the remand of the minor was extended until Monday, April 30. Jerusalem Magistrate Court Judge David Shaul Gabai Richter ruled that, “The likelihood of there being a reasonable suspicion is low.”