Last suspect in Ra’am vote-buying freed as court criticizes police probe

The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday ordered the unconditional release of Ibrahim al-Garibi, the last suspect still in custody of three southern Bedouin arrested by police on election day.

Cops had arrested the men at dawn on the day of the vote for allegedly planning to buy votes for traditionalist Arab party Ra’am.

Police had sought to place Garibi under house arrest and bar him from using the internet, but Judge Eran Tzabari rejected the motion and criticized investigators.

“The investigating unit has made no progress in the case, nor have I heard of any actual efforts to check the defendant’s own claim,” Tzabari said in his decision. “I see no sense in leaving the defendant under house arrest.”

The three suspects were accused of planning to pay people to vote for Ra’am. Police found envelopes of cash and Ra’am ballots during searches of some of the suspects’ homes. But the men denied the bribery allegations and said the money was intended for charitable purposes.

The court had previously accepted a police request on Monday to keep Garibi in custody for another two days to complete investigative steps.

One of the three now-freed suspects, Saef Abu Reash, was released unconditionally on Sunday after a judge criticized police for failing to produce new evidence supporting an extension of his detention.

The third man, Hussein al-Masoudin, was released Tuesday at the end of a two-day remand extension that Tzabari had approved on Sunday.

Police did not appeal either release.

Police said early on election day that they’d found envelopes containing tens of thousands of shekels in cash in the suspects’ homes.

However, Abu Reash’s lawyer insisted that no money was found in his client’s home and that a total of NIS 12,000 ($3,800) was found in the homes of the other suspects.

Police later also acknowledged that the homes of the three suspects had been searched without warrants.

The arrests were carried out after a tip from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Ido Norden, according to Hebrew media reports.

Netanyahu himself also claimed in an election day video statement that the allegations against the “three senior Ra’am moneymen” reflected an attempt “to steal the election from us.”

The Ra’am case became one of two investigations cited by Netanyahu and Likud as they alleged that the October 27 election was “stolen.” The other probe concerns suspected foreign funding and influence operations targeting the election, and has also run into serious difficulties, with severe disagreements between the Shin Bet and the attorney general.

No evidence linking the two cases has been made public, and police have said the Ra’am vote-buying investigation is separate from the foreign-interference probe.

On Wednesday, the Shin Bet told the Central Elections Committee that intelligence in the separate foreign-interference investigation pointed to foreign funding and influence activity involving “thousands of people and possibly more,” though it said further investigation was needed to establish the scale of the activity. The agency did not identify those involved or present public evidence that the alleged activity changed the election result.

According to an i24news report on Wednesday, Zini has sought to question four top Arab politicians in the case, without providing prosecutors with evidence on the allegations against three of them. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara put out a scathing statement declaring that “in a country governed by the rule of law, it is not possible to interrogate citizens or elected officials without evidence that justifies it.”

The Central Elections Committee certified the results of the vote on Wednesday after reviewing protocols from 9,069 polling stations and finding no irregularities indicating that the integrity of the election had been compromised or that the results had been altered.