Ahuvia Sandak, z”l
See here for a list of posts connected to the Ahuvia Sandak, z”l, case.
Friday, March 26, 2021, 10:49 Honenu has filed a 30,000 NIS suit on behalf of M., a demonstrator in his twenties, against the Jerusalem Police over two false detentions on consecutive days. At the first detention, M. was not interrogated and at the second the interrogator himself realized that M. had been falsely detained and informed him that he would transfer the case to the Police Investigation Unit.
The statement of claim mentions that the first detention occurred when M. participated in a demonstration protesting the death of Ahuvia Sandak, z”l, at the Bar Ilan Intersection in Jerusalem. As M. crossed the intersection, according to law, one of the policemen at the scene shouted at him and after an exchange of words shoved him. Immediately afterwards four policemen jumped on M. and without saying a word, loaded him into the police car. M. was held in a detention cell for approximately eight hours, during which time he was not interrogated, and released to his home at six o’clock in the morning.
That evening, M. participated in another demonstration at the Bar Ilan Intersection, legally and without stepping off of the sidewalk. From the statement of claim: “At some point the claimant noticed that border policemen were violently shoving an intellectually impaired man. The claimant called out to the policemen that the man was ‘not all there’ and asked them to leave him alone.” The policemen listened to his request and one of them, who seemed to be the commander, ordered the others to leave the man alone.
Then suddenly and without cause “in an inexplicable act one of the policemen charged at the claimant, forcibly laid him down on the ground, and a group of policemen joined in pinning the claimant to the ground. Although M. did not resist detention, the policemen were very aggressive. Among their acts, one of the policemen stepped on M.’s face while he was still sprawled on the ground and another wrapped his arm around M.’s neck and choked him as he was lifted into the police car.
Again M. waited for many hours in a detention cell, but this time he was interrogated, for a matter of minutes. As soon as the interrogator heard M.’s testimony, he “was shocked that [M.] had been detained and on his own initiative told the claimant that he would transfer the case to the Police Investigation Unit.” M. was released to his home and required medical treatment at an urgent medical care center.
Eladi Weisel from Honenu explains that “both false detentions were completely baseless and purposeless. These detentions reveal only a small portion of the use that the Israeli Police makes of detentions as a deterrence to restrict protests and not as an investigative tool, as is set by law.
“The second false detention included two unjustified and brutal assaults, the first on an intellectually impaired man. The second was on a man solely because he dared to try to alert the policemen that they were assaulting the intellectually impaired man.
“The Israeli Police acted illegally and brutally in an attempt to suppress a public demonstration against them. Only last week we filed ten suits against the Israeli Police, and the suits cover a small portion of the injustices committed in the framework of over-enforcement of the law against demonstrators protesting the death of Ahuvia Sandak, z”l. We hope that thanks to our actions, the public’s freedom to protest will be realized, even when the protest is against the police,” Weisel concluded.
Among the claims, M. is suing the police for false detention, for causing him to wait many hours without seeing the station officer, for failure to inform any of his relatives of his detention, for assault, for illegal use of force by a policeman, for restricting freedom to protest.
The statement of claim asserts that the above-mentioned failures constitute legal injustices, among them, violation of human dignity, violation of the fundamental right to liberty, violation of freedom of expression, violation of freedom to protest, assault, and false and negligent imprisonment. The sum of compensation requested is 30,000 NIS.