From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Lawyers say Shin Bet case against suspected killers of Palestinian ‘crumbling’
The attorneys representing the suspects in the murder of Palestinian woman Aisha Rabi say in a press conference at the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court that their clients have nothing to do with Rabi’s death and that the Shin Bet “cynically” waited to lift a gag order on the case until minutes before a judge ruled on extending the suspects’ remand.
The attorneys — Adi Keidar and Hay Haber of the Honenu legal aid organization and Itamar Ben Gvir — claim that their clients have an alibi placing them away from the site near the Tapuah Junction where the stone that killed Rabi in October was hurled.
Confirming fears expressed at settler demonstrations over the past week, the lawyers say 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,” says Keidar. “The boy I met was tired, broken and exhausted.”
Ben Gvir argues that the Shin Bet chose to “suddenly” lift its gag order because “its case is crumbling.”
“Just yesterday, it was telling reporters not to publish the information it released today because it would endanger Israeli security. What has happened since?” Ben Gvir shouts.
Ben Gvir adds that the interrogators “cursed, spit on and even sexually harassed” his client. He claims that the Shin Bet agents even performed a jailhouse informant exercise with cops posed as inmates that 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.
Commenting on the delegation of far-right activists that violated the Sabbath in order to coach the suspects on how to bare Shin Bet interrogation, Ben Gvir refuses to pass judgement on the group, saying the incident only shows how far the Shin Bet has driven religious Jews in its “excessive” interrogations.
— Jacob Magid
