Honenu Attorney Nati Rom; Photo credit: Honenu
Monday, January 6, 2020, 9:38 A young married resident of Yitzhar spent last Shabbat in remand under difficult conditions after he was detained on Friday morning near Jerusalem on suspicion of attempting to injure a policeman ten days previously in Yitzhar. He was taken to several police stations and although the police intended to request his release Saturday night, and by law should have brought him before a judge before Shabbat they did not.
The Yitzhar resident lives in the Kumi Ori neighborhood, where during recent months large numbers of policemen have been continuously stationed. Despite their easy access to the Yitzhar resident, the police did not simply knock on his door to summon him for an interrogation. On Friday, when he was on his way to Jerusalem, he was detained by policemen who brought him to the police station. When the police officer informed him that they intended to remand him over Shabbat, there was ample time to bring him to court for a deliberation, and yet he was not brought.
At a deliberation on Saturday night, after Shabbat, the police requested his release on condition of an order distancing him from the Yehuda and Shomron regions. During the deliberation, Honenu Attorney Nati Rom, who represented the detainee, leveled criticism at the police for not making any effort to detain him for ten days and then leaving him in an illegal remand over Shabbat. The judge rejected the conditions presented by the police and released the detainee under other restrictive conditions, including distancing for several days from only Yitzhar.
Honenu Attorney Nati Rom: “Unfortunately the Israeli Police are again using a few day’s remand as a punitive procedure, in an improper manner. A married father was remanded from Friday morning until after Shabbat, despite the fact that in the end the police asked the court to conditionally release him. This is a blatant indication that there was no need for the remand and no grounds for it either. Also, the demand to distance him for 30 days from the entire Yehuda and Shomron regions is disproportionate and indicates that there was a different intent behind the detention and not only a search for the truth. Also, we are angered by the fact that the police detained him on the grounds of his posing a danger, after for ten days since the supposed violation there were no attempts to detain him. We call on the Israeli Police to use the authority granted to them in legal and legitimate ways and not to misuse it as a means to pressure, and not unnecessarily on citizens against whom no accusations have been proven.”