Protesters held on terror charges made to undergo strip search after meeting with Labor lawmaker

The four anti-government protesters charged with terrorism for allegedly firing lit flares at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Caesarea home last month were subjected to a full strip search after meeting with Labor MK Gilad Kariv last week, Hebrew media reports.

According to Channel 12, the Israel Prison Services ordered the strip search on suspicion that Kariv had smuggled them a communications device or similar contraband when visiting on Thursday. However, speaking to the Kan public broadcaster, Kariv says he was scanned for weapons and other suspicious items before entering the prison facility.

Kariv, in a statement responding to the report, accuses the IPS of “deliberately thwarting the ability to carry out parliamentary oversight of the conditions of detention,” and says that the reported incident is proof that the categorization of the detainees as security prisoners “severely violates their rights.”

In a post on X, he describes the search as a “price tag attack” by the IPS for a politician “who is not on the right side requesting to meet with prisoners.

“This search cannot be disconnected from the difficulties that the office of [National Security] Minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir piled up for my first visit 10 days ago,” he writes.

“When you give a criminal a monopoly on the use of force in the country you get the dismantlement of the rule of law,” Kariv fumes in reference to Ben Gvir who has several criminal convictions, including one for supporting terrorism.

Condemning the incident, the Public Defender’s Office says that being strip searched “is a harsh, humiliating and degrading act.”

“The Public Defender’s has previously criticized the inappropriate phenomenon of unnecessary strip searches,” it continues. “Even in instances where the Prison Service has the legal authority to conduct a strip search on a person in custody, this should only be done when appropriate, when there is a real suspicion of the transfer of prohibited substances.

“Even when a person loses his freedom, he does not lose his dignity,” it adds.

The IPS says in response that “During a pro-active search in the prison, prisoners in several locations were checked while preserving their dignity. The attempt to make a connection between this action and a meeting with detainees/prisoners with elected officials has no connection to reality.”

Anti-government activists Rear Adm. (res.) Ofer Doron, 63, his son Gal Doron, 27, Itay Yaffe, 62, and Amir Sadeh, 62, were indicted earlier this month in the Haifa District Court on charges of carrying out an act of terror through the reckless and negligent use of fire, and attempted arson for allegedly firing the flares at the Netanyahus’ residence.

They have been in detention since they were arrested in mid-November, and the State Attorney’s Office has requested they be kept behind bars until the end of the legal process.