In rally outside agency chief Yoram Cohen’s home, a Jewish terror suspect’s mother accuses him of ‘crimes against humanity’
Some 200 far-right activists protested the continued detention of Jewish terror suspects in a demonstration outside the Jerusalem home of Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen late Saturday.
The protesters called for a state commission of inquiry into allegations that the suspects were illegally tortured by the Shin Bet in an effort to crack a July 31, 2015 investigation into the arson murders of a Palestinian family in the northern West Bank village of Duma.
“A terrible crime has been committed here,” the mother of one detainee, a minor suspected of being an accessory to the Duma murders, told the Walla news site.
The detention and alleged torture “were an egregious violation of human rights. A group was targeted ahead of time, and representatives of that group were arrested and severely tortured in order to extract from them confessions to crimes they did not commit,” the mother said.
Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, confessed to Shin Bet investigators that he carried out the Duma firebomb attack, and re-enacted parts of it on December 19, the agency has said.
The attack claimed the lives of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha, who burned to death in the blaze started by the Molotov cocktails thrown into the family home in the middle of the night, as well as his parents Saad and Riham, who died in hospital later. Only five-year-old Ahmed Dawabsha, now in rehab, survived the blaze.
Uliel’s confession was made public only on January 3 due to a court-imposed gag order that was only lifted last Sunday when indictments were filed against Uliel and his minor accomplice, as well as other alleged Jewish terrorists suspected of taking part in other recent attacks.
Uliel is a member of an organization called Givonim, a subset of the Hilltop Youth, a group of extremist Jewish activists. The Givonim seek to replace the democratic government of the state of Israel with a religious monarchy by means of a violent coup against the government, while expelling or killing all non-Jews in the land, the Shin Bet said in a statement following the indictments.
Outside Cohen’s home, supporters of Uliel and the other suspects demanded answers to claims by the suspects’ lawyers that they had been brutally tortured, including through the use of sexual assault. The Shin Bet has vehemently denied the claims, saying it used only the limited methods for applying “moderate physical pressure” allowed under law, and that its actions were overseen by law enforcement officials, the judiciary and elected leaders, including cabinet ministers.
“Tell us, Yoram Cohen, why is it forbidden to publicize the [exact] methods used in the investigation, if it’s all legal?” the mother, who is not named because her son’s identity is protected as a minor, called out at the protest. She called the Shin Bet’s purported actions “crimes against humanity.”
She vowed to “keep coming here” until a full government investigation is launched.
The Duma suspects are being held amid a broad crackdown on Jewish terror groups that followed the Duma attack.
As reported by The Times of Israel