Minor arbitrarily detained in Old City of Jerusalem

Tuesday, July 12, 2016, 16:36 On Tuesday, July 12, a Jewish minor walking from the Western Wall towards Sha’ar Shechem (Damascus Gate) was approached by police detectives on HaGai Street who requested his ID card, informed him that he was forbidden to walk on that street and that he must return to the Western Wall.
After several minutes more detectives arrived, led by an officer who informed the minor that he was walking a “spontaneous Circling the Gates”. The officer ordered him to return to the Western Wall and refused to justify the order.
The minor requested permission to continue walking on HaGai Street, but the officer told him that he must return to the Western Wall only or else he would be detained for not obeying a policeman. The minor replied that he would like to know the legal justification for requiring him to return to the Western Wall or else he would not return. At that the officer ordered him detained and taken to the police station. See a video clip of the detention here. Video credit: “Hozrim LaHar”
Honenu reports that after interrogation the interrogators asked the minor to sign on an order banning him from entering the Old City of Jerusalem. He refused on the grounds that he had not violated any law and there are no grounds for the order. In response the interrogators informed Attorney Nati Rom, who is handling the case on behalf of Honenu, that the minor will be kept in remand overnight and brought to a deliberation the following morning.
Attorney Rom immediately filed an urgent appeal on the decision with the court describing the incident and requesting that the deliberation take place the same day and that the minor be released immediately. Jerusalem Magistrate Court Judge Keren Miller ruled that the police must respond to the appeal by 17:30.
Honenu: “Unfortunately we are once again witnesses to scandalous conduct by the Israeli Police, this time the false detention of a youth who was innocently strolling down the alleys of the Old City [of Jerusalem] with his bicycle and detained by a large number of policemen only because he did not agree to return to the Western Wall and wanted to stroll in the Old City.”
In related news, a Temple Mount activist was detained on the morning of Tuesday, July 12 by police detectives as he was on his way to an event on the Temple Mount in memory of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, Hy”d, who was murdered in her home in Kiryat Arba.
The detainee was taken to the police station and interrogated on suspicion of planning to carry out “provocations” during the memorial. He was also interrogated concerning a photograph of himself waving an Israeli flag with the Temple Mount in the background which he had posted on his Facebook page. The photograph is apparently Photoshopped and has a quote from a poem written during the First Aliya: “Raise the flag of Zion high”.
The detainee received legal counsel from Honenu Attorney Rehavia Piltz at the police station station and after interrogation was released from remand.