Likud lawmaker compares Shin Bet to KGB for treatment of Jewish terror suspects
‘It would be better if the Shin Bet spent its time trying to prevent murderous Palestinian terror and not torturing Jewish boys,’ tweets Nava Boker
A lawmaker from the ruling Likud party on Sunday compared Israel’s Shin Bet security service to the notorious Soviet KGB for its treatment of five Jewish teens arrested on suspicion of involvement in an October stone-throwing that led to the death of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman.
“Every day stones are thrown at vehicles in Judea and Samaria and if you are wondering why you don’t hear about it, it’s because it is Palestinians stoning Jews,” wrote MK Nava Boker in a tweet, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names.
“But when Jewish youths are suspected of throwing stones, suddenly they experience KGB investigation methods,” wrote Boker. “It would be better if the Shin Bet spent its time trying to prevent murderous Palestinian terror and not torturing Jewish boys.”
The Shin Bet and the IDF routinely arrest, detain and imprison Palestinian stone-throwers, many of them children.
מדי יום נזרקות אבנים על כלי רכב ביו"ש ואם אתם תוהים למה לא שמעתם על זה, כי אלה פלסטינים שזורקים אבנים על יהודים. אבל כשנערים יהודים נחשדים בזריקת אבנים פתאום הם נתקלים בשיטות חקירה של הקג"ב. עדיף שהשב"כ יעסוק במניעת הטרור הפלסטיני הרצחני ולא בעינוי נערים יהודים
— נאוה בוקר-Nava Boker (@nava_boker) January 6, 2019
Boker’s comments came after the Shin Bet earlier Sunday revealed that the group of Jewish teenagers arrested over the past week are suspected of involvement in the murder of Palestinian woman Aisha Rabi. Rabi, 47, was struck in the head with a large stone while sitting in the passenger seat of a car being driven by her husband in the northern West Bank, the Shin Bet said in a statement, providing the first details on the investigation since a gag order was imposed on the case two days after the October 12, 2018, killing of the mother of eight. The boys are suspected of “terror offenses, including murder,” the Shin Bet said.
With court approval, the suspects were initially denied access to their lawyers, who have alleged that the security service was torturing them to obtain a confession. The Shin Bet denied the allegation.
The security service said “its interrogations are carried out according to the law and are subject to the supervision of the State Attorney’s Office.”
“The detainees in Shin Bet interrogations receive all the rights they are entitled to under the law,” the agency said. “Claims regarding the denial of the rights of those interrogated… are baseless and their purpose is to divert the discussion from the serious suspicions in which they were detained for interrogation.”
The security service publicized evidence Sunday evening that it said “indicates the extreme anti-Zionist characteristics” of the teenagers it arrested.
One piece of evidence included a video uncovered during the investigation that depicts the burning of an Israeli flag. A second item the Shin Bet said its agents found in the room of a suspect was an Israeli flag with a swastika drawn over the Star of David along with the phrase, “Death to Zionists” daubed at the top.
Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir, who is representing one of the suspects, said there was no proof that the video and the daubed flag belonged to the teens arrested in the case. Moreover, he accused the Shin Bet of cynically publishing the evidence because it knows its case “is crumbling.”
“When the Shin Bet is under pressure, all methods are suddenly kosher; so, in the coming days we will hear spins against the suspects claiming they are are anti-Zionists and what have you. In reality, these are good children who love the State of Israel,” Ben Gvir said.
The Shin Bet released the evidence hours after a press conference held by the five suspects’ attorneys, who accused the security service of having tortured their clients during their interrogation. Moreover, the lawyers said the teens have an alibi placing them away from the site near the Tapuah Junction, where the stone that killed Aisha Rabi, a mother of eight, was hurled.
The Shin Bet also addressed “false” accusations made by “interested parties” against its handling of the investigation.
The agency asserted that the suspects were not “abducted,” but rather arrested by officers who were equipped with warrants and had notified the minors’ parents ahead of time.
Acknowledging that it had barred the suspects from meeting with their attorneys, the Shin Bet pointed out that it was a step “taken from time to time, against both Arab and Jewish suspects… in serious terror acts” and that the Lod District Court had signed off on the measure.
The Shin Bet said it has been careful to place the suspects away from adult inmates and that the interrogations were being carried out “in accordance with the directives of the medical authorities.”
The suspects were examined throughout the interrogation and “did not raise any complaints to the Israel Prisons Service medical authorities,” or with the judges presiding over their remand hearings, the security service added.
The suspects were also provided with religious items, including prayer shawls, in order to observe the Sabbath, the Shin Bet says.
The attorneys representing the suspects — Ben Gvir as well as Honenu’s Adi Keidar and Hay Haber — said in their press conference at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court that their clients had nothing to do with Rabi’s death and that the Shin Bet had “cynically” waited to issue its statement until minutes before a judge ruled on extending the suspects’ remand.
Confirming fears expressed at settler demonstrations over the past week, the lawyers said their clients underwent “torture” while in Israeli custody.
“From morning to night (my client) was shackled to a chair, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, in a small cell,” said Keidar. “The boy I met was tired, broken and exhausted.”
Ben Gvir said the interrogators had “cursed, spit on and even sexually harassed” his client. He claimed that the Shin Bet agents had even performed a jailhouse informant exercise with cops posing as inmates who pressured the suspects to confess. Similar efforts were documented in other Jewish terror probes, including the investigation into the 2015 terror attack in the Palestinian village of Duma in which three members of the Dawabsha family were burned to death.
A judge on Sunday extended the remands of the five suspects until Thursday. Two of the teens nabbed in a second round of arrests on Saturday night have been barred from meeting with their lawyers until Tuesday.
The five teenagers are students at the Pri Haaretz yeshiva high school in the northern West Bank settlement of Rehelim. Three of them were arrested last Sunday, while an additional two were arrested six days later.
עוד פרסמנו בהמהדורה: תיעוד שהגיע לידינו – הפשיטה שערכו לפני שבוע כוחות שבכ ומשטרה על ישיבת פרי הארץ ברחלים, שם נעצרו שלושת החשודים הראשונים pic.twitter.com/CXjxY5X72P
— Carmel Dangor כרמל דנגור (@carmeldangor) January 6, 2019
The Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday evening that the security coordinator of Rehelim has been interrogated by the Shin Bet on suspicion that he deleted footage allegedly showing the suspects leaving the settlement on their way to the attack.
The Rehelim official was released after being questioned.
The news channel also reported that a squad of Shin Bet agents had arrived at the settlement the morning after the attack and let a rabbi at Pri Haaretz know that it was investigating the stone-throwing incident. However, the agents assured the rabbi that they would not violate the Sabbath to conduct their investigation and would instead return after sundown to question the students.
During that time, however, the rabbi tipped off residents in the nearby Yitzhar settlement who drove to the yeshiva — violating religious laws that prohibit driving on the Sabbath — in order to coach students on how to withstand Shin Bet interrogations.
The Times of Israel spoke with a Yitzhar official, who said that rabbis in the settlement had signed off on the extreme measure upon deeming that the Shin Bet interrogations would pose life threatening danger.
