The Bayt Fajr saga is over – Attorney Lin: “Who will compensate those falsely detained?”

Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 15:02 On Saturday night, detectives from the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations detained a Hevron resident, a minor, on suspicion of involvement with the Bayt Fajr mosque arson over one year ago.
The following day, investigators from the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations requested a lengthy seven day extension on his remand, even though he hadn’t been interrogated yet. The Petah Tikva Magistrate Court extended his remand by one day only, and justified the decision by the need to interrogate the youth.
Yesterday (Monday) the youth was brought again to court and the police requested that he be released to an extended house arrest outside of Yehuda and Shomron.
Honenu Attorney Yossi Lin, who represented the youth, demanded that no restrictions whatsoever be placed on the youth being as there is nothing linking him to the incident. Judge Devora Atar accepted most of Lin’s pleas and ruled that the youth will pay a 2,500 NIS bond and be unconditionally released.
Thus ends the investigation of the Bayt Fajr mosque arson, being as the youth was the last detainee in the case. All of the detainees, who were detained by the special investigative staff for “price tag” cases set up by the police commissioner, were unconditionally released after the court ruled that there was no evidence linking them to the arson. See here for a recent example. One detainee, M., was released after interrogation in the Hevron Police Station.
Honenu Attorney Yossi Lin, who represented the youth, said in response to the conduct of the police that, “From the beginning it was clear that the detention was baseless. All of the other suspects in the case had been released, and it was clear that the investigation had reached a dead end.
The police acted maliciously in bringing the detainee to court and requesting a seven-day remand, even before he was interrogated, when afterwards they interrogated the suspect for only a quarter of a hour. The police acted thus in order to obligate the court to extend the remand for the purpose of investigation. After one day in remand the suspect was in fact released when there was no cause for extending his remand.”
Lin adds that, “In my opinion, the police did not act in good faith, and did so in order to please the upper echelons by showing them that they are detaining suspects in cases such as this, when the bottom line is that they have no evidence and are making false detentions. Attention must be given to the fact that no-one is going to compensate the suspect for this false detention.”

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