81-year old woman roughly detained

Monday, September 2, 2019, 21:23 On Sunday, September 1, during a demonstration against the Women of the Wall who gathered at the Western Wall for Rosh Chodesh prayers on the first day of the month of Elul, the police detained Mina Fenton, and a photographer documenting the prayers. Fenton, an 81-year old public figure who campaigns for preserving the sanctity of the Western Wall, was also taken in for interrogation in the afternoon.
Initially the policemen detained the photographer on suspicion of threatening the Women of the Wall and she was taken taken to the Western Wall Police Station. When Fenton approached to see what she could do to help her, one of the policewomen started to yell at her and grabbed her arm. When Fenton attempted to release herself from the policewoman’s grip, she was also detained.
Fenton was taken to the nearby Kishleh Police Station for interrogation. When the policemen realized her age they suggested that she sit down, assisted her and in the end did not open a criminal case against her.
The detained photographer had not threatened the Women of the Wall and was unconditionally released. Both of the detainees contacted Honenu and Attorney Moshe Poleski came to the Kishleh Police Station to counsel Fenton prior to her interrogation.
Mina Fenton stated that, “I experienced the Western Wall Police Station and interrogation at the Kishleh, and the bottom line was nothing. It started when at the end of the prayers I was informed that the photographer whom I had invited had been taken to the Western Wall Police Station, and I wanted to check why.”
Fenton described the detention: “The policewoman who handled her [the photographer] was rough and violent and at some point tightly grabbed my right arm and pushed me towards the exit. I told her that she shouldn’t dare to touch me and I attempted to break her hold on me. And then she called out to everyone who was there that I had raised a hand against her, and I was detained.”
“Once they understood how old I was they changed their attitude, but I had to go to the Kishleh [Police Station] for interrogation. There a sensible and humane interrogator said that he just wanted a summary from me of what had happened and then I could go. No case was opened against me, but I finished there at three in the afternoon.”
Fenton added that for the past two months the Women of the Wall had been causing problems. “Yesterday, for the first time, we brought professional photographers in order to document provocations by the Women of the Wall. One of the photographers was detained. Last month they [the Women of the Wall] stepped on a 12-year old girl so that parents would stop their daughters from coming to the Western Wall. There has been an intentional suppression of the women who come to preserve the sanctity of the Western Wall. There has been no treatment of the source of the provocations, which are becoming more and more violent every month.”
Honenu: “It is unacceptable that a woman over the age of 80, a well-known public figure of Jerusalem, is at the police station for an entire day because of a complaint for which there is no evidence, other than the baseless complaint by a young hot-tempered policewoman who lacks the requisite training for dealing with the public, who treated a woman disgracefully and violently.”