Will Adei Ad resident return home for house arrest?

Sunday, May 31, 2015, 10:26 The Attorney General’s office filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Israel against the return home of an Adei Ad resident detained during the April 16 incident in Kochav HaShahar. During the incident, which was staged by police, five residents of Kochav HaShahar and other nearby communities, who are still under house arrest, were detained. Honenu attorney Adi Kedar: “The law enforcement agencies are harassing settlers instead of dealing with organized crime and corruption within their own ranks.”
On Thursday, May 28, the Jerusalem District Court accepted Kedar’s opinion and ruled that an Adei Ad resident who was detained during the incident and held under house arrest in the north of Israel be allowed to be under house arrest in his own home. The Attorney General’s office appealed to the Supreme Court of Israel in a demand to cancel the decision and prevent the defendant from returning to his home and his family, despite the fact that the incident was staged by the police and the evidence was weak.
Honenu attorney Adi Kedar filed a counter-appeal in which he claimed that the evidence in the case is insufficient and demanded that the restrictive conditions of the defendants be cancelled. On Monday, June 1 the Supreme Court will rule on both appeals.
In the appeal Kedar describes the destruction of evidence by the policeman who gave the central testimony in the case. The destruction, for which a complaint was filed with the Police Investigation Unit, was discovered only after an indictment was filed. The Attorney General’s office mentioned during a court deliberation in April 2015 that Detective Ophir Ushani, who disguised himself as an Arab during the incident, and on whose testimony the case is based, destroyed a scrap of paper on which he described the actions of the suspects in real time, immediately after the incident. Only after Ushani destroyed the note did he write a new report, in which some of the defendants are linked to the assault itself. Kedar also presented the video clip in which the police documented the incident which, despite the charges, does not show the defendants assaulting the shepherds. Kedar also claims that the defendants acted in accordance with the Dromi Law, which is also applicable to pasture land, and that the disguised policemen and the Arab shepherds did enter the pasture land belonging to the communities of Givat HaBaladim and Ma’aleh Shlomo in order to provoke the residents and incite them to respond. The Dromi Law regulates the actions which farmer/agriculturalists may legally take in order to protect themselves and their property against intruders.
“At a time when the State is a storm of corruption scandals and organized crime, especially among public figures and law enforcement authorities, the Attorney General’s office is dealing with preventing the return of a head of household to his home, his children and his work, in a case which is being prosecuted in response to an incident in which there is little evidence,” responded Kedar. “We hope that the Supreme Court will put an end to to this treatment of the case and authorize the decision of the Jerusalem District Court and allow [the Adei Ad resident] to return to his home.”