The injured youth; Photo credit: Courtesy of the photographer
Sunday, July 11, 2021, 10:15 Honenu filed a complaint with the Police Investigation Unit over the brutal detention of M., a Jewish youth, at the Jerusalem Flag Dance, which took place this year on June 15. The detaining policeman applied unreasonable force, injured the detainee, and fabricated evidence in his police action report.
Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado filed the complaint, stating that at the time of the Jerusalem Flag Dance, M. was walking with a group of Jewish youth on Jaffa Street, towards Sha’ar Shechem (Damascus Gate). A group of border policemen pushed the youths to advance, even though they wanted to stay where they were in order to show a Jewish presence and exercise their right to protest.
From the complaint: “The youths walked up the street, although not as quickly as the policemen expected. They advanced slowly, but in an orderly manner and steadily, without any complaining or violence. At some point, a policeman or a border policeman began to shove my client. My client was pushed against a fence, and with his back to the fence he grabbed it with both hands so that he would not fall and so that the policeman would not push him farther. Then the policeman grabbed my client’s head, bent his upper body backwards about 90 degrees, and hit my client’s head with his helmet that was zipped to his bullet-proof vest.” As a result, M. suffered a facial injury which necessitated stitches and a topical skin adhesive.
The complaint also states that the policeman wrote in the police action report that M. had shoved a policeman, which is not true: “This claim is mendacious. We have a video clip which documents the assault and shows that my client did not shove the policeman, did not apply any force and did not make any contact with the policeman.”
The policeman also stated that the evidence in the investigation does not include documentation from the policeman’s body camera. This is a violation of patrol regulations, and Yado claims that the absence of this documentation weakens the testimony in the police action report.
In the complaint, Yado cited the decision by Judge Leibovich about the release conditions. Judge Leibovich wrote that the video clip presented by the detainee supports his testimony, that he did not assault the policeman, and shows the policeman forcibly bending downwards the upper body and head of the detainee, whereas the video clip presented by the police does not support the claims against the detainee.
Yado is of the opinion that the judge’s decision supports the claim in the complaint: “Not only did the policeman attack M. unnecessarily, but in order to justify his act, wrote an action report according to which M. shoved him, thereby putting the complainant in remand for two days.”
Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado, who is representing M.: “We heard the story from the youth, we saw the evidence he presented to us, and we thought that there were grounds for fighting for a clarification of the facts, to see if an injustice had been done to him as he claimed: assault by a policeman and an illegal two-day remand because of a false claim by a policeman that he had attacked him. The facts apparently justify clarification and we are acting towards that end.”