Abuse (illustration)
Abuse (illustration)Thinkstock

Police once again defined an incident which three Arabs raped a 20-year-old mentally disabled Jewish girl as "terror" Monday, less than 24 hours after a police spokeswoman publicly denied the rape had "nationalistic motives." 

The Tel Aviv District Police filed a request to the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court Monday morning to extend the remand of Amad Al-Din Daragmeh by 8 days, Walla! News reports, based on five separate charges; one or more of them were terror-related. 

But less than one hour after news of the charges reached Israeli media, the police apparently asked to retract terror-related charges from the extension request, Channel 2 now reports.

"At this stage we request to remove the charges that the rape was on a nationalistic basis," a police spokesperson stated Monday. "This has been blown out of proportion." 

But then, minutes after that, police asked to return the clause to the statement. 

Police confusion

In the crime, two Arab residents of Judea and Samaria as well as an Arab citizen of Israel were filmed raping the mentally handicapped girl in a motel in southern Tel Aviv, humiliating her and spitting on her while shouting racist slurs and threatening to harm her family.

The original statement on the case indicated it was for "nationalistic" motives, i.e. a terror attack; police hid the case from the public for ten days out of concerns it would spark clashes between Jews and Arabs.

But spokesperson Merav Lapidot told Army Radio Sunday that the crime "was not a nationalistic crime," and further criticized the media for how it handled the news of the rape thus far, adding that the investigation is being handled by experts as thoroughly and meticulously as possible. 

The statement followed an apology from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Friday for condemning the rape before the investigation was complete.