Authorities seek to extend alleged Jewish terror leader’s remand

Meir Ettinger, a right-wing Jewish extremists held by Israeli security forces without trial, is set for release at the end of January, but Israeli authorities plan to seek an extension of his detention.

The security services consider Ettinger, the 23-year-old grandson of assassinated extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, to be the head of a Jewish terrorist underground which seeks to destroy the Israeli state and establish a Jewish monarchy, according to a Channel 10 report Sunday.

For that reason, they seek an extension of Ettinger’s administration detention, even though he wasn’t arrested in direct connection to the July 31 Duma terror attack, as many of over 100 right-wing extremists questioned by the security authorities in recent months were.

Administrative detention allows a terror suspect to be held indefinitely without trial in six-month renewable increments. While detainees can appeal the detention itself to the High Court of Justice or lower district courts, the suspects do not receive full trials or have access to the evidence against them.

The Shin Bet internal security agency arrested Ettinger in August 2015 in the wake of the deadly firebombing of the Dawabshe home in the West Bank village of Duma in which three were murdered. He is not believed to be linked to the attack, and was not questioned about it, Channel 10 reported sunday.

Earlier on Sunday the two main suspects in the deadly Duma firebombing were indicted.

Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, was charged with murder. He confessed and reenacted the July 31, 2015, attack, in which three members of the Dawabsha family were killed, according to the Shin Bet. Another minor, identified only as Aleph Aleph, was indicted as an accomplice.

Also Sunday, a Jewish teenager detained without trial since August over his suspected involvement in two other arson attacks was released with no charges filed against him.

Mordechai Mayer, 18, of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, was the first alleged Jewish extremist arrested and held in administrative detention, in an order approved by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Mayer, the son of US immigrants, was held in connection with arson attacks on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, located at Tabgha, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in July 2015; and Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey, in February of last year.

While the defense minister approved the six-month order, Mayer was freed just shy of his fifth month of detention without charges.

“This is an earthquake,” Mayer’s attorneys said in a statement. “The boy was held five months in jail because of false information.”

Upon his arrest, Mayer’s parents had accused the Shin Bet security service of “scapegoating” their son.

“Yesterday night there was a knock on the door, they showed us the [detention] order and took him for half a year,” Gedaliya Mayer said in August. “They didn’t say a word about why, any suspicions, nothing — just that they were taking him to jail. We discovered that in Israel they can take an 18-year-old boy to prison for half a year without accusing him of anything. They had to arrest someone, and he was the scapegoat.”