Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado; Photo credit: Honenu
See here and here for additional posts about detentions on the day of the 2020 Jerusalem Pride March and here for a post about brutal detentions on the day of the 2019 Jerusalem Pride March. See here for a post about a false detention before the 2019 Ashdod Pride March.
Monday, May 3, 2021, 8:49 The Israeli Police will pay a Jewish youth thousands of shekels in compensation over a false detention on the day of the June 2020 Pride March in Jerusalem. The youth, then a twelfth-grade high school student, was on his way from his home in Jerusalem to his yeshiva in the Binyamin region. He was detained when he crossed the Yaffo-Bar Lev intersection during the early evening hours and border policemen asked him to identify himself. The lawsuit stressed that the youth was not walking through or near any of the sterile areas of the Pride March, but rather crossing a main intersection. “There was no sign posted or prohibition to be in that area, not for people in general, not for the religious, and not for religious youth.”
The statement of claim also mentioned that the youth was not detained by himself, but rather as part of a group whose common characteristics were “being religious and walking through the streets of Jerusalem on the day the Pride March was held”. The members of the group were searched on the street – over which the youth sued the police – detained and taken to the police station in the Russian Compound.
The detainees waited at the police station for several hours until they were interrogated. During interrogation, the youth was questioned regarding his intentions to disturb public order. However he was not confronted with any information whatsoever that the police had against him. He was further questioned with regard to his personal views and opinions and his fingerprints were taken. At approximately 23:00, he was released and forced to hitch-hike to his yeshiva because it was too late for him to catch a bus.
Subsequently, the youth sued the police for false detention stemming from illegal stigmatic profiling. He and his attorneys were surprised to discover at a deliberation that the police had three representatives in court. Moreover, the police agreed to a compensation arrangement without demanding an opportunity to present their claims and explain the grounds for the detention.
Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado, who represented the youth: “Honenu filed suits against the Israeli Police on behalf of dozens of individuals who were falsely detained at the time of Pride Marches. The fact that at the proceedings, which are the first of their kind to be arbitrated, the police arrived without any satisfactory legal explanation for the practice of widespread detentions of right-wing demonstrators, indicates that our claims are correct and just. We intend to continue all the more strongly to protect the rights of right-wing activists and the right of the entire population to publicly express conservative and religious opinions.”
Eladi Weisel, a Honenu intern who was present at the deliberation, stated, “The Israeli Police have adopted an outrageous systematic practice of false detentions based on unacceptable profiling. There are no legal grounds for the detentions, which blatantly deviate from the authority of the police and trample many fundamental rights of the detainees. The claimant, a youth without a criminal record, but with long payot, was detained and taken to the police station only because he dared to have a religious appearance as he walked in public on the day of the Pride March. We call on the Israeli Police to internalize the court rulings and the provisions of law and to stop the systematic violation of legal freedom of protest of those who oppose the Pride March.”