The Petach Tikvah Magistrate’s Court on Sunday, 2 Cheshvan, remanded a suspect in the arson attack against a mosque in the Galil community of Tuba el-Zangaria for an additional two days. Justice Shalhevet Kamir-Weiss extended the suspect’s remand, a minor, pressured by police who rejected the court’s recommendation to release him due to a lack of evidence.

At the deliberation additional proof was received that there is no evidence in the case, after Justice Kamir-Weiss recommended that the police reach an agreement and release the minor to house arrest. Investigators from the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations refused and demanded an additional six-day extension on his remand. In the end the judge extended his remand by two additional days in order to “allow additional investigative activity”.

Honenu notes the suspect has been in remand for over a week and has not been interrogated at all during the past few days. The detainee told Honenu attorney Adi Kedar, who is representing him, that during the interrogations that had been carried out, not one piece of evidence linking him to the act had been presented to him. The detainee vehemently denies the claims according to which the police link him to the mosque arson.

It should be noted that during the past few days also the parents of the minor were summoned for interrogation to the offices of the National Unit of Serious and International Crime Investigations and his elderly grandmother as well. Apparently the interrogations are meant to pressure the detainee into admitting to a crime that he did not commit, Honenu officials indicate.

Honenu attorney Adi Kedar, who represented the suspect at Sunday’s hearing, said that “The police and the court are having a contest as to who will blink first, when both of the authorities know that the minor should be released. Unfortunately neither of them has the courage to admit that there is no evidence in this case and the suspect should be released immediately.”

Honenu reiterates that also the two previous suspects arrested on suspicion of involvement with the mosque arson were quietly released after no evidence linking them to the act was found.

Moreover, last week the police requested an extension on the house arrest of one of the detainees, however the court refused, and the house arrest came to an end.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)