From the Liveblog of
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Police internal affairs division drops charges against officers accused of violence at 2023 protests
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) announces it has closed its investigation into Chief Superintendent Yair Hanuna and other police officers from the Tel Aviv Police District over their actions during anti-government protests in the city in March and July last year.
According to DIPI, the evidence, including videos, collected over one complaint demonstrated that the complainant’s claim that he had been assaulted by several police officers who hit him when he was handcuffed, was not true.
DIPI says that videos shown by the media of the incident had been selectively edited “to distort the incident” and that the complainant, Amitai Abudi, had “violated the public order” by kicking an object toward a water cannon and resisting arrest in a way “that justified the use of force by the police officers.”
In another incident, DIPI stated that the complainant, Omer Gat, refused repeated requests by the police to leave the site, including by Hanuna, he was “arrested lawfully with the use of reasonable force,” which did not injure Gat in any way.
In the third incident, DIPI found that an arrest had been lawful after the complainant, Uri Bichonski, tried to set an object on fire on the Ayalon Highway and then fled from the police to avoid being arrested.
The department said that no evidence had been found to attribute an injury sustained by Bichonski as he fled the police to the arresting officers when they detained him.
The decision to close these investigations comes after DIPI indicted five other officers for throwing stun grenades toward protestors during an anti-government demonstration in March 2023 in violation of police protocol.
