Deliberation on Geulat Tzion detainees delayed until Thursday

Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 21:06 At the end of two deliberations which took place on Wednesday, February 27 at the Natzeret Magistrate Court the two sides decided that the case of the three young men detained early that morning at the Geulat Tzion outpost in the Shilo bloc on suspicion of planning a “price tag” incident would be ruled on on the following day in either the Petah Tikva or Jerusalem Magistrate Court. According to the police the three young men are suspected of conspiring to commit a crime and planning a misdemeanor with hazardous materials. Honenu attorney Adi Kedar pleaded that the rights of the minors among the detainees had been violated and also pleaded that the Natzeret Magistrate Court did not have the authority to rule on the case because the supposed misdemeanor had not been carried out in its jurisdiction. The judge advised the GSS and the police to accept Kedar’s plea and thus the deliberation was postponed until Thursday.
During the early morning hours on Wednesday, February 27 special police and GSS forces raided Geulat Tzion. All of the single men were gathered in one place and handcuffed behind their backs with plastic handcuffs. For an hour an a half the security forces combed the area, especially the caves, while masked policemen surrounded the young men and aimed their weapons at them. At the end of the search the security forces took the four detainees and left the rest of the young men still handcuffed.
One of the youths suspected of violating an administrative order banning him from entering Yehuda and Shomron was taken to the Central Unit of the Yehuda and Shomron Police in Ma’aleh Adumim and interrogated there. Later the same day he was brought to the Jerusalem Magistrate Court for a deliberation and sent home to a five day house arrest. Three other detainees, two of them minors, were taken for interrogation to the GSS facilities in the Kishon detention center in Acco. In the afternoon the three detainees were brought to the Natzeret Magistrate Court. The first deliberation dealt with the two minors. In the deliberation the judge accepted the plea of Honenu attorney Adi Kedar that the rights of the minors had been violated when their parents had not been present during their interrogation, and postponed their deliberation until the following day, after a legal interrogation had been conducted. Additionally Kedar pleaded that the Natzeret Magistrate Court did not have the authority to rule on the case because the supposed misdemeanor had not been carried out in the jurisdiction of the court. Kedar repeated the plea in the deliberation on the adult detainee. In the end the two sides agreed to postpone the deliberation until the following day with the youths remaining an additional day in remand.
In response to the development of the events Kedar, who is representing the detainees, criticized the conduct of the GSS and the police, “As far as the accusations are concerned, despite the fact that there has not yet been a deliberation on the actual charges, it seems that the accusations have no basis in fact and that they are based on information obtained from intelligence gathering only. The suspects completely deny the accusations. I am pleased that the court accepted our pleas concerning the violation of minors’ rights and also those concerning the lack of jurisdiction of the Natzeret Magistrate Court to hear the case, thereby preventing the police and the GSS from isolating the suspects and distancing them to regions in which they could much more easily pressure the suspects into confessing to actions which they had not carried out.”
In response to the detention the residents of Esh Kodesh, a community near Geulat Tzion, commented that, “Although the reason for the detentions of the Geulat Tzion residents this morning is not yet known, we are certainly dumbfounded as to how such large numbers of security forces have not yet been able to detain even one terrorist from the village of Qusra, despite the photographs and video clips in which the faces of the Arabs from the village attempting to lynch IDF soldiers and also civilians are visible.”