Rioters who broke into IDF police chief’s home charged with assault, trespassing

The Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday ordered 10 suspects kept in custody after they were arrested during an anti-conscription riot on Tuesday night in which participants illicitly entered a senior IDF officer’s home.

The suspects, out of the 25 initially arrested, face charges of assaulting a police officer, malicious damage to property, criminal trespass and unlawful assembly.

During the incident, demonstrators affiliated with the hardline Jerusalem Faction breached the home of the head of the IDF’s Military Police in order to protest the detention of yeshiva students who have evaded military conscription.

In his ruling, Judge Yaniv Ben Harush wrote that “the evidence presents a picture of an organized initiative to reach the home of a military police officer and intimidate him, while a large crowd entered his yard, causing damage to the yard, and sowing fear and terror among his family members.”

“These are serious acts, and while every person in a democratic country is granted the right to express his protest on a given issue in public dispute, the respondents’ behavior exceeded the limits of legitimate protest,” Ben Harush wrote.

He extended the suspects’ detention by one day, rejecting the prosecution’s request for a five-day extension.

An extremist ultra-Orthodox group numbering some 60,000 members, the Jerusalem Faction regularly demonstrates raucously against the military enlistment of yeshiva students. It operates a hotline to mobilize protesters against the arrest of draft dodgers and has been involved in paying evaders financial rewards.

תבינו את הדרמה באשקלון: עשרות מפגינים מהפלג הירושלמי נכנסו לתוך ביתו של מפקד המשטרה הצבאית תת אלוף יובל יאמין ומתבצרים שם https://t.co/2ohPMV8KN4 pic.twitter.com/iimgCNsbY3

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In a statement released by the group, Menachem Stauber, the suspects’ attorney, slammed the court over its decision.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Stauber claimed that the commander of the Ashkelon police station had told the suspects that they were “sons of whores, terrorists, worse than terrorists” and had compared them to Hamas’s elite Nukhba terrorist unit.

The attorney further insisted that the damage to Brig. Gen. Yuval Yamin’s home “was caused by the police pushing the demonstrators.”

“When a remand request is born out of an atmosphere of hatred and dehumanization, it constitutes a vengeful arrest rather than a legal one,” he said. “It is unacceptable for a police officer to pre-designate targets and exploit the nation’s most painful tragedies to justify depriving protesters of their liberty.”

The military on Tuesday evening said the extremists had broken into Yamin’s home while his family was inside. Yamin himself was not at home at the time. Police said in a statement that the rioters “trespassed into the yard, acted violently, and disrupted the routine of life in the area.”

Police later announced that 25 suspects, some of them minors, were arrested.

According to the Jerusalem Faction, 26 suspects were arrested on Tuesday evening, 14 of whom were released overnight. An additional two minor suspects were released during the day, the group said in a statement.

Responding to condemnations, including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jerusalem Faction said: “Red lines have been crossed; leave the Torah students alone.”

The incident in Ashkelon was part of a larger series of demonstrations carried out across the country on Tuesday by Haredi activists.

The Jerusalem Faction blocked the entrance to Jerusalem late Wednesday afternoon.