Police detained two Arab reporters at murder scene, station commander ordered their immediate release – report

Police detained two Arab Israeli reporters last night at the scene of a suspected double homicide near Kafr Qasim last night, Haaretz reports.

Officers at the scene reportedly claimed the two journalists — Haaretz’s Deiaa Haj Yahia and Ynet’s Hassan Shaalan — were obstructing police in carrying out their duty when they neared the crime scene.

But according to both men, a senior police officer had previously given them permission to be there, after they identified themselves as journalists.

“After around 40 minutes — after all the senior police officers saw us and exchanged greetings with us — a police officer who identified himself as the commander of the scene arrived and began shouting at us that we were interfering in his work, threatened to detain us and called a police car that was there,” says Yahia, as quoted by Haaretz.

He claims that at the officer’s direction, police ordered the two men to put their hands up and searched them, then confiscated their phones and car keys.

They were then driven to the Kafr Qasim police station, where the station commander identified the two and ordered them released immediately. Police tell Haaretz that they are investigating the incident.

The two had arrived at the scene of a suspected double homicide in a forest near Kafr Qasim, in which two bodies were found inside a burning vehicle Saturday night. The two slain men were named as Ayoub Issa, 35, and Lutfi Amer, 25, according to the Abraham Initiatives organization, which tracks Arab murder victims.