Judge Menachem Mizrachi, the President of the Rishon L’Tzion Magistrate’s court, slammed the police on Thursday for their conduct in the Qatargate affair, including their overnight arrest of Yonatan Urich, a former advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who is a suspect in the affair.

The police re-arrested Urich only minutes before he was due to be released from house arrest. The police summoned him for questioning on Wednesday evening and his wife was told to pick him up at 8:00 p.m. However, after she arrived, along with her baby, she was forced to wait outside the building until 12:30 a.m., when she was informed that the interrogation was over and her husband had been re-arrested.

Mizrachi rapped the police, saying that Urich’s arrest was unlawful. “What happened that he was arrested?” he asked. “He came to the investigation, said things that you thought were contradictory, and you decided to arrest him? Did he obstruct something? Did he try to flee the country?”

The police representative replied: “Additional people were arrested, and as a result, the suspicion against him has strengthened.”

Mizrachi then demanded an explanation for why the decision to arrest Urich was made by a police officer rather than appealing to the court. “What is the source of the legal authority of the officer who ordered his arrest? You can’t arrest people like that. He’s not a robber who emerged from a bank with a gun.”

The investigator claimed that the new information arrived only in the late evening hours, but the judge remarked in response: “It is incomprehensible why the investigative unit did not rush to the court to request a new order as it has done in the past! The court is available 24 hours.”

The police representative could not provide a clear answer and replied: “I have nothing to answer to His Honor.”

Mizrachi expressed astonishment regarding the nature of the investigation, saying: “Regarding the extension of detention, the feeling creeps in that the investigation is racing ahead without anyone stopping and asking themselves what crime has been committed here?”

Mizrachi also asked why other suspects were not under house arrest, and why house arrest was requested for some suspects but not for others. “I have never seen anything like this,” he said.

Mizrachi added that he will not “agree to the request to extend Urich’s arrest, and no court that is concerned for human liberty would allow it.”

The judge also criticized the fact that the suspects have been under house arrest for over 30 days, and no information has been provided about their alleged obstruction of investigative procedures.

The decision to re-arrest Urich was made with the approval of the State Attorney and the Attorney General.

Strategic consultant Shlomo Filber responded to the dramatic development: “Not a single legal reporter! Not even one! pondered or questioned for a moment the trampling of the rights of those interrogated in Israel. There is not even one tzaddik in Sodom. Busha, busha, busha!”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)