Remand of Givat Ronen detainees extended

Tuesday, June 2, 2015, 19:27 In the middle of the night between Monday, June 1 and Tuesday, June 2, two residents of Givat Ronen, a hilltop community in the Shomron, were detained while the IDF and the Israeli Police destroyed structures in the community. The police suspect the detainees of assaulting a policeman and entering a closed military zone. One of them is also suspected of possessing a spike.
During a deliberation on Tuesday, June 2 at the Petah Tikva Magistrate Court it became known that the order signed for the purpose of evacuating the site bore dates from 2005 and 2014. Additionally the order is not applicable to residents of the hilltop. The two detainees are married with families and residents of the hilltop community, which numbers approximately 25 families. The judge ruled that there was not a reasonable suspicion that the detainees had entered a closed military zone, but did extend their remand until Thursday, June 4.
Honenu attorney Aharon Roza, who is representing the two detainees, stated in response to the remand extension that, “The Israeli Police and the border police are simply creating a case out of nothing, and that is regrettable. They arrived with exaggerated numbers of forces in the middle of the night at Givat Ronen, where entire families have been living for many years, in order to destroy a storage shed. All that when they are supported by an order from a major-general declaring a closed military zone, which bears an irrelevant date, an order which in any event does not have any legal bearing on the permanent residents of the site. And when residents left their homes in order to verify the reason for the commotion, they were detained on a claim of assaulting policemen.”