JERUSALEM: Israel will allow harsher interrogations of suspected Jewish militants, with methods once reserved for Palestinian detainees, after a deadly West Bank attack blamed on ultra-nationalists, a minister said yesterday.
The announcement came a day after the government said it would start detaining citizens suspected of political violence against Palestinians without trial, another practice previously used only on Palestinian suspects.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet came under growing pressure to crack down on violent far-right Jewish groups after arsonists killed a Palestinian toddler and severely injured his parents and brother on Friday.
Interior Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the security cabinet that approved the detention measures on Sunday had also authorised stronger interrogations.
“What the security cabinet told the security services yesterday was that any method is kosher,” Erdan said on Israel Radio.
“An interrogation method like ‘tiltul’, or anything that is done when it comes to Palestinian terrorists — the same thing should be done when it comes to a Jewish terrorist,” he added, referring to a Hebrew term for violently shaking a suspect.
Violently shaking suspects was one of several methods used by the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet against Palestinian militants that Israel’s Supreme Court curbed in 1999.
But security experts have said the ruling left it an option in select cases where interrogators prove to superiors an urgent need to glean information that may foil imminent attacks.
The Shin Bet could not immediately be reached for comment.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a lawyer who has represented far-right Israelis accused of political violence, said Erdan’s “tiltul” remarks were scandalous, adding that he might mount a new Supreme Court challenge.
“The government is acting like an elephant in a china shop,” Ben-Gvir said. “After they’ve spared arch-terrorists this method, they want to try it out against Jewish youths.”
No one has been arrested for Friday’s arson attack, which Erdan said appeared to be the work of Jews.
Ultra-nationalists have mounted sporadic vandalism against the property of Arabs, Christians, peace activists and the Israeli army.
In a separate interview on Army Radio, Erdan said the state might require suspects to wear electronic ankle-bracelets to track their movements.
REUTERS
Jerusalem: A Jewish extremist group’s leader was arrested yesterday after a Palestinian baby died in a West Bank firebombing.
The domestic intelligence service named him as Meir Ettinger, a grandson of Meir Kahane, a rabbi who founded the racist anti-Arab movement Kach and was assassinated in 1990 in New York.
He was arrested in Safed in northern Israel “because of his activities in a Jewish extremist organisation”, a Shin Bet spokesman told AFP. Police said Ettinger, who is aged around 20, was suspected of “nationalist crimes” but did not accuse him of direct involvement in Friday’s firebombing.
According to Israeli media, he was the brains behind a June 18 arson attack on a shrine in northern Israel where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of loaves and fish. Ettinger was to appear in court today for a custody hearing, police said. Media reports said Ettinger could face a year of “administrative detention” under the government’s harder line against “Jewish terrorists”.
Israel normally applies the measure, which dates back to British-mandated Palestine, against Palestinians, allowing renewable six-month periods of detention without trial. But it can now be used with Jewish detainees in cases of insufficient evidence to go to trial or if the suspect refuses to testify.
On his blog, Ettinger has in past days denied the existence of an underground Jewish organisation, but has defended attacks on “crimes” such as the existence of churches and mosques branded as “places of pagan worship”.
The Shin Bet spokesman said Ettinger was in January barred from entering the West Bank or Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem for a year “because of his activities”.
AFP
