Another baseless detention – Second Tuba Zangria mosque arson case detainee released

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 14:21 Another fanfare detention turns out to be baseless.
Following the release of the first of the Tuba Zangria mosque arson detainee on Sunday, the second detainee was currently released, after two and a half weeks of extended investigation.
This morning investigators from the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations requested the conditional release of the detainee, however Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar, who represented him, refused the conditions and pleaded that there is no connection between the detainee and the arson incident. In the end the court released the detainee to a seven-day house arrest, in addition to administrative distancing from Yehuda, Shomron and the northern region of Israel for 30 days and a 1,500 NIS bond.
To reiterate, the detainee was detained two and a half weeks ago, several hours after the Tuba Zangria mosque was set on fire, when he was in the Shomron city of Ariel. The police admitted that he was delayed at random for interrogation, being as he was wanted for investigation in an existing case. Only after several hours did the investigators from the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations decide to detain the man, a resident of northern Israel, as a suspect in the mosque arson case. During the entire, exhausting remand the detainee denied all connection to the arson incident.
Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar, who represented the detainee, said in response that “As far as we are concerned, the saga is over. It is a shame that the police hurried to detain someone and endanger his family without considering the ramifications of the remand. I regret that he was in remand for two and a half weeks, during a holiday season which no-one will be able to return to him.”
Keidar added that “Our main complaint is directed at the court, which time after time extended the remand at the request of the police, in a case that today has turned out to be without any evidence.”
After the decision to release the detainee was announced sources close to him said that “Already from the moment he was detained we sensed that there was no basis for the remand and that it was intended to prove that the police, supposedly, were actively searching for the arsonists. They took an innocent young man, with no criminal record, and placed him in a lengthy remand for no reason. This is a scandal, in which the court took part.”
Honenu, which handled the case, reports in response that “The conduct of the GSS and the various branches of the police is not new to us. Time and time again they detain the innocent, relying on confidential reports alone, which turn out to contain no substance. The police are careful to widely publicize the detention of suspects, and so people who have committed no crime find themselves in remand and under various restrictions, for no reason. This conduct which we encounter again and again must stop.”