After riots developed in Bnei Brak on Sunday, a large number of police forces and Yasam officers were brought to the city, and 28 people were arrested, most of them innocent bystanders that were not involved in the riots.
Twenty of the detainees were released on Sunday night, and the rest were released on Monday, as the police could not provide any evidence of criminal acts for 26 of the suspects. Only two of the suspects were sentenced to five days of house arrest due to a reasonable suspicion that they assaulted a police officer.
According to the witnesses, many of the detainees, including women and minors, were subject to “show arrests” as part of a collective punishment to prove control over the city, while the actual culprits managed to escape the scene. One detainee was a young Chareidi man who was innocently riding his bike home from work when he was violently thrown onto the street by police officers. He had no connection to the riots. Footage of the incident caused a major uproar.
His lawyer announced that he intends to file a complaint with the Police Internal Investigations Department (PIID), claiming unnecessary use of force against his client.
Other residents or passersby were also beaten by police officers for no reason, with some injured by stun grenades hurled at the scene and some taken into custody—while the rioters escaped arrest.
In one case, a middle-aged man who tried to hand a yarmulke to a detainee was forcibly thrown onto the street—in the path of a moving car—by a Yasam officer.
Attorneys Shlomo Haddad and Itai Cohen, who represented the detainees, said, “Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases these are show arrests. Minors and adults alike were pulled into vans in a forceful manner, when it seemed that the purpose of the arrest was to create a deterrent and awareness effect only, and not due to a real suspicion of an offense.”
“The vast majority of the detainees are passers-by who did not take part in the events and did not commit any offense. We view the conduct severely and will stand on the rights of our clients in full within the framework of the legal proceedings.”
Many Bnei Brak residents complained of collective punishment by the police. “We strongly condemn what happened to the female soldiers; it is unacceptable,” one resident said. “But on the other hand, there is a feeling that the police are acting in an overly sweeping way. Innocent people get caught up in the area and are arrested or pushed for no reason.”
Other residents voiced concern that this conduct may tarnish an entire community. “There is a whole city here made up of law-abiding people. You cannot treat everyone who happens to be on the street as if they are a rioter,” another resident said.
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
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11 Responses
The government believes כל ישראל (חרידים) עריבים זה לזה
There are no innocent bystanders. What would you do if you saw a major riot ahead of you? Any normal person would walk a block out of the way and stay clear of it.
This article is absurd, most of the “detainees were women and minors”. Who wrote this Al Jazeera?
Even if the people they detained were truly bystanders, the way this is written stripped away any chance of anyone believing it.
This is nothing new. The government is evil from day one. They hate religious Jews even non Chareidim with a passion. From the beginning they took yeminite children away from their families who arrived from Yemen and put them into non religious kibbutzim where the kids were forced to eat pork on Yom Kippur. The kids went lost. How many today remember the forced autopsy issue where any Jew who died his body was forced to be cut up to shreds. Satmar rebbe Ztl was screaming and protesting here in New York. Then there was the yossele Schumacher story. The Mossad intelligence agency spent over two years searching kindergartens worldwide to get this religious boy back to a secular lifestyle. Instead of going after Arab terrorists they were busy trying to destroy the neshoma of this little boy. What most of you guys dont know is the Nazi doctor mengela got away and was never caught because Mossad was more concerned with one little boys Chareidi lifestyle that needed to be destroyed. This is Zionism. They are truly enemies of our Torah and morality.
Any compensation for false arrests or we’ll just have to forget about it like usual
This is what ZioNazis do. Round up everyone and shoot them all into the same pit.
and the rioting was all imaginary and the pictures were all fake. right. why are these lawyers trying to gaslight the world?
@flatbush yid: i call bs. you’re no yid. with that much sin’at hinam, you must be a goy. with a huge chip on your shoulder.
We authentic Jews hate evil. All our Rabbis of yesteryear warned about the evil Zionist. We religious Jews were in the land first and then came the hordes of European secular communistic crowd. They are evil to the core. They turned Israel into Sodom. Worse than Sodom. One day when we real Jews take over we will even the score.
No army, not in yeshiva.plenty of time for often violent demonstrations.
FAFO. No one came to pull me out of my apartment as part of the “collective punishment campaign”.