The Zarog family; Photo credit: Avraham Shapira
Thursday, March 4, 2021, 17:42 The Jerusalem Magistrates Court accepted a compromise agreement and ruled that Neriya Zarog will receive compensation of 5,500 NIS from the Israeli Police and the Jerusalem District Attorney’s office over a false detention. The suit filed by Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado states that because of faulty communication, the policemen were not informed that the habeas corpus writ had been canceled 12 days previously and therefore there were no grounds to detain Zarog.
In the statement of claim, Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado described the incident, which occurred approximately one year ago. At midnight, Zarog returned home to Yitzhar from Jerusalem with his wife, their two young children and his brother-in-law in the car. At a checkpoint set up on the entry road to Yitzhar the police took his personal information and then immediately told him that he was detained and handcuffed him.
Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado wrote in the statement of claim: “Neriya told the policeman that his wife was with the children in the car and he couldn’t leave them alone at night. Neither Neriya’s wife nor his brother-in-law had a drivers license and they couldn’t walk by themselves up to their home in Yitzhar.” Despite that, Zarog was loaded into the police car and taken to the police station.
Then Zarog was told that the grounds for his detention were an outstanding habeas corpus writ. Despite his explanations to the policemen that it had been canceled almost two weeks previously by a judge’s decision, they did not accept his explanations. At the police station, Zarog was required to pay 1,000 NIS in bail before he was released.
The statement of claim continued: “Neriya stayed at the police station until five thirty in the morning, repeatedly stating that there had been a mistake and that he should be released. At some point the station commander said that someone should bring 1,000 NIS in cash and then [a binding internal document] would be written so that Neriya would be released. In light of the situation, an acquaintance of Neriya’s brought him cash to the station and he was released. All night, Neriya sat on a chair, leg-cuffed, opposite the desk sergeant,” which is in violation of the leg-cuffing regulations. Additionally, as a result of the false detention, Zarog’s wife and brother-in-law were stuck with the car on the entry road to Yitzhar and had to wait until they found someone who could come from Yitzhar and drive them home.
The grounds for the suit are a failure by the police to transfer information, which indirectly led to the false detention. More from the statement of claim: “The claims department is responsible for the error. [Due to the actions] of either the locator department or the the policemen at the scene, one of the links in the chain of command that was supposed to transfer the information about the cancellation of the habeas corpus writ and the implementation of the decision to cancel, failed and caused the false detention.”
Additionally, Yado stressed that this is a pattern of conduct “The undersigned has already filed approximately ten suits for failures to update [relevant parties] concerning the cancellation of habeas corpus writs, and the faulty chain of communication continues to cause significant and completely unnecessary violations of the rights of youths. The actions and failures claimed in this suit are torts of negligence, assault, false detention, and hyper-legal orders which are set in paragraph 9a of the Detention Law and hyper-legal orders set in conjunction with the provisions of the Fundamental Laws of Human Dignity and Liberty.”
See here for previous posts about Neriya Zarog.