Ofer - Stone Throwing, Remand Extension

Share:
Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email
Observers: 
Aya Kaniuk, Karin Lindner, Nitza Aminov (reporting)
Nov-17-2014
|
Morning

Translation: Marganit W.

 

I was informed that at 9:30 the hearing of the case of Yasser and Halil Jahalin would take place. The two were remanded in custody after the preliminary hearing in August in which the prosecutor described the case as Mafia activity: the police secretly followed the people for 7 months, eventually capturing more than 15 people.

When we left the court during break, I met family members who informed me that the hearing was postponed to the afternoon. The following day I checked with them again and found out that no hearing had taken place, only a request for postponement.

The next hearing was set for 1.12.14.

Monday is the day for traffic cases. This time there were so many of them that 3 courtrooms were allocated to them.

 

In Justice Colonel Rani Amar’s court mostly remand extension cases are heard.

One detainee – a student with no prior record – is accused of throwing rocks. In the court’s lingo it is called “environmental disturbance.”

The defense requests an alternative to detention, but the prosecutor claims (and the judge later concurs) that rock throwing is inherently dangerous and can only be answered by detention.

 

Outside, we spoke with an elderly woman from the village of Qatana who came to attend her son’s hearing. I didn’t get all her explanations, but she said that they live near the fence where security cameras are installed, so it is impossible that the charges against her son are true. The son is represented by Atty. Ahlam Haddad who states that the man was arrested on 20.10.14 together with his brother. The brother has been released, but the prosecution is using a witness (Police Officer Baram) to prove a case against her client after a bag with Molotov cocktail bearing fingerprints had been found. Here things got a bit complicated (at least for me – N.A.): the attorney claims that a statement was taken from her client two months after the incident. In the meantime, the witness saw the detainee on Facebook, once with his face bare and once covered. The Facebook page the investigators saw, however, does not belong to the detainee, but they brought photos by which they claimed they had identified the detainee.

In short, Big Brother’s is watching. What’s more important is that the attorney mentioned that the bag the police had seized contained empty bottles, not Molotov cocktails.

The judge said he wanted to check if there was evidentiary basis for remand extension. He found that one existed involving the suspect in disturbances of the peace or at least in rock throwing.

A date for arraignment was set for 26.11.14 when the indictment will be submitted.