The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday ordered Police to release of all of Tuesday’s detainees from the Temple Mount area. The list included one detainee who was tased despite offering no resistance to his arrest, as shown on video, and who had been arrested because he was suspected of ripping his clothes while on the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av, as a sign of mourning.
Attorney Menahem Stauber from the Honenu legal aid society said the video included “difficult images of Police using a taser against innocent people.”
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court rejected Police requests to extend the detention of four young men by three days and ordered the release of all those arrested Tuesday in the Old City of Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount.
Among the detainees at the hearing was a man who, during his arrest, was tased while lying on the pavement and not endangering the arresting policeman. Honenu plans to submit a complaint to Police Internal Affairs against the officer who tased the detainee, asking that he be prosecuted with the full measure available.
Judge Joya Skapa Shapira rejected the Police request and ordered the release of the detainees under conditions of exclusion from the Temple Mount for various periods of time.
At the hearing, the Police representative claimed that the detainees had been arrested because they had violated the public order during their visit to the Temple Mount by ripping their clothes.
In a subsequent hearing, Police asked to order the removal of a young woman for 60 days from the area of the Temple Mount. She had been arrested Tuesday near one of the gates of the Temple Mount on suspicion of praying at the site and disturbing pedestrian traffic. The judge rejected most of the Police request and ordered her removal for only two weeks from the Temple Mount area.
Attorney Stauber, who represented the detainees together with Attorney Moshe Polski of Honenu, said in a statement: “Once again, Police employ severe violence against those who only wanted to pray on the Mountain of the Home (Har HaBayit, the literal Hebrew name of the Temple Mount). At their home. Because although it might be called ‘Mountain of the Home, in this home the Jews are not protected tenants but homeless. And, as usual, we witness harsh images of police using a taser against innocent people, and then arrest them because they objected to being electrocuted.”
“Fortunately, the courts are well aware of Police tendency to severe violence,” Stauber noted, adding, “and this time, too, my clients were released immediately by the court.”