On Thursday, a display of torture was exhibited for the public at Habimah Square in Tel Aviv, where activists of Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Might in Hebrew) demonstrated how the suspects in the Duma Village arson case were tortured during their Shabak interrogations. The performance was based on the testimonies of Shabak interrogators in the Central District Court in Lod during the early trial proceedings.
Earlier this year, the families of the defendants in the Duma Village case revealed that during the March 15 closing statements stage of the trial’s preliminary segment of the trial, the Central District Attorney’s office announced in an unprecedented fashion that they would withdraw from the indictments’ material several of the defendants’ confessions which were given during interrogations in which “special means,” which the families’ have said is a euphemism for torture, were used.
Passersby were invited to experience personally the Shabak “special means” by demonstrators who used the names of the agents who testified in court.
On Tuesday, 72 prominent rabbis, including several yeshiva deans, wrote Prime Minister Netanyahu and Justice Minister Shaked, demanding that the legal proceedings in the Duma Village case be interrupted to allow for an investigative committee to look into the agents’ court testimonies of using torture to extract forced confessions from the accused youths.