Please click here for a list of posts relating to the Arab rioting throughout Israel in May 2021, and click here for a list of posts relating to cases in which Honenu provided legal counsel to victims of antisemitic attacks in Jerusalem.
Honenu Attorney Nati Rom; Photo credit: Honenu
Monday, January 8, 2024, 13:02 In a compromise agreement, the Jerusalem Magistrates Court awarded a Jewish minor and his family 10,000 NIS compensation for their unlawful detention during the 2021 Shavuot holiday. The family and several other Jews planned to stay at a Jewish family’s house in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of Jerusalem to protect it from Arab neighbors while the residents were away for the holiday.
A short time after the Jewish house-sitters arrived, Arab residents of the neighborhood attacked the house in which they were staying with rocks and fireworks. The victims called the police who arrived almost an hour later and ordered everyone carrying a weapon to turn it in to the police, claiming that they had opened fire on the rioting Arabs. They were then taken to the police station. The minor’s father was among those detained and forced to turn in their weapons. Because he did not want to leave his son alone to face rock-throwing Arabs, he brought his son along to the police station. As the police left the scene with the detainees, the Arabs barraged the police car with rocks.
On the way to the station, the father contacted Honenu Attorney Nati Rom who came to the station to provide legal counsel. Attorney Rom offered to watch the son during the father’s interrogation but was dumbfounded to discover that the minor was also being detained. Initially, the police told the minor that he would be asked to provide open testimony. However, several hours later, he was informed that he would be interrogated under warning on suspicion of conspiring to discharge a firearm in an urban area. During his interrogation, which was conducted under severe conditions and threats, and late at night contrary to juvenile law, Attorney Rom was not allowed in the room to provide the minor with legal counsel. After the interrogation, the interrogator took the minor for mug shots and finger-printing, desecrating the Shavuot holiday and blatantly violating regulations.
The minor and his father were held at the police station until early the following morning and then placed under house arrest for two days. Attorney Rom appealed their house arrest with the court, which released them. Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado filed a suit against the police on behalf of the minor and his father for 30,000 NIS over their treatment. Several days ago, the sides informed the court that they had reached a compromise agreement of 10,000 NIS in compensation.
Attorney Yado: “This is the second ruling within only six months against the same police station for two cases in which the police falsely detained minors who were attacked by Arabs instead of assisting them to escape the attack. We hope that the correct conclusions will be drawn from these incidents and the treatment of juveniles in the future will improve.”
For a similar case involving a group of young men organized to guard an abandoned Jewish property in the Beit Hanina on Shavuot in 2021 (that year, May 16) who were attacked twice on their way to the site, click here: Detention over self-defense
The post includes a video clip of Arab rioting in Beit Hanina.