Police asked arrested protesters if they were connected to Ehud Barak, had been paid to demonstrate

Echoing a conspiracy theory, five protesters arrested at last night’s demonstration calling for a hostage deal were asked by police intelligence investigators if they had been paid to attend and whether they were connected to former prime minister Ehud Barak, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

“At the end of the investigation, they put me in a room with a man in civilian clothes, and he started asking me questions about how I was connected to the protest,” one of the unnamed protesters tells the outlet.

“When I answered ‘there are WhatsApp groups,’ he asked me which ones,” he says.

“He asked me if I was being paid to come to the demonstrations. I said ‘if anything, I pay — I invest time and sometimes money too.’ So he brought up Ehud Barak’s name as someone who contributes to the protests. He was trying to understand what I know about donations from all kinds of people, including whether there are people funding the protests,” he says.

All five of the detainees were released overnight.

Barak, who has become a harsh critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent years, has been a vocal figure in protests in recent years and previously urged civil disobedience, leading to fiery denunciations by coalition figures. Some called for him to be jailed, while a member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party said last year that “in other countries, such a person would be up for hanging.”