Three Israeli teens arrested in Jewish terror probe
Shin Bet, police special forces said to have raided West Bank yeshiva; all suspects have reportedly been prevented from meeting with lawyers
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Three Israelis were arrested Sunday on suspicion of involvement in a major security probe whose details are under gag order, a defense official confirmed to The Times of Israel.
The investigation is being conducted jointly by the Shin Bet security service and the police’s nationalistic crime unit, which are probing the unspecified incident as a possible Jewish terror attack.
A squad of Shin Bet agents and officers in the Yasam police reconnaissance unit raided a yeshiva in the northern West Bank and grabbed one student, who has since been prevented from speaking to a lawyer, said a spokesman for the Honenu legal aid organization that is representing the detained student.
Shortly thereafter, a second student was arrested on his way to the religious institution, his attorney Itamar Ben Gvir told The Times of Israel, adding that he too had been prevented from speaking to a lawyer.
Hours later, Honenu reported that a third teen was arrested in the central city of Modiin, adding that it would also be representing the suspect who has been prevented from meeting with an attorney.
The three teens will be brought before the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court Monday morning for a remand hearing, the right-wing legal aid group said.
Ben Gvir slammed the conduct of Israeli authorities and claimed the Shin Bet agents were likely torturing his client in order to extract a false confession.
The attorney cited a report last week on the “Uvda” TV program that documented the security service’s brutal tactics in extorting admissions of guilt from the Israeli suspects in a terror attack in the central West Bank Palestinian village of Duma, where three members of the Dawabshe family were burned to death in July 2014.
“The order prohibiting my client from a meeting with an attorney was intended precisely for the same purpose of increasing pressure and abuse,” Ben Gvir said in a statement.
The Shin Bet has defended its tactics in the Duma case, saying extreme measures were required — and green-lit by the state — due to the fear that additional attacks were forthcoming.
