The case began, from Lerner's standpoint, when one of the photographers on his staff was arrested, at Tuesday morning's anti-expulsion protest outside Kedumim. "The photographer was accused of hitting an army officer of the rank of major," Lerner said. "When I started asking around, however, no one knew of such a case. No one saw any officer get hit, and no one saw this photographer have any physical contact with any security forces. I even asked the IDF spokesperson if there had been such an incident, and they checked and got back to me, and said that after investigating the matter, they had found no evidence of such a case."



Lerner said there was more to the arrest than met the eye: "What happened was that my photographer had been filming a bunch of girl protestors, one of whom was hit by a Yassam policeman and hurt. When the Yassam police saw him filming that incident, they quickly arrested him - in order that there be no evidence of the beating. He saw them coming and took out the film in order to give it to his friend, but it didn't help. They took away his camera, and the film from his friend, and arrested his friend to boot."



As if putting together the pieces of a puzzle, Lerner continued: "To further show that the police are trying to hide evidence, hear this: The girl who was hurt in the demonstration was taken to the hospital - but on Tuesday night, before she was released and before the examinations were completed, the police came in and abducted her. The police claimed that she was officially released, but this is patently untrue. Their goal was simply to avoid having her wounds documented."



The girl's father, Yigal, who lives in Yitzhar, was on the way to the hospital - Petach Tikvah's Schneider Children's Hospital - when he was informed that she had been taken. His story sheds chilling light on the story: "The director of the emergency room called me and said that the police - Officer Golan Yefet - had come to take my daughter Ayalah. He said that he objected and said that she was being examined, but Yefet took her anyway."



How was Ayalah arrested in the first place? Yigal said that she was standing by the demonstration when the policemen fell upon her and beat her. "She is now suffering from bruises in many parts of her body," he said. "Yesterday, the court extended her custody until Friday."



Asked what are the charges against her, he answered sarcastically, "With attacking a police officer, of course. Similar charges, or slightly less serious, have been leveled at the other 3-4 arrestees."



Lerner said he had sent about 10 phone and beeper messages to the Samaria/Judea police district spokesman, asking for a comment on the incident. "I even sent a fax today to the Police Comissioner himself," he said, "and have received no response at all from the police."



"In court," Lerner said, "the police at first claimed that the photographer didn't even have a camera, but then they later backtracked... They asked yesterday for a 48-hour extension of his custody, but the judge gave them only 24 hours. So listen to the dirty trick the police pulled: They didn’t wait the full 24 hours, but instead, at 1:00 in the morning [Thursday], they dumped him on the street, and said he could go home. They dumped him with no money, and he had to get back to his home all the way in Haifa! But because it wasn't an official release, he had no recourse to even demand his camera back."



Lerner said he plans to pursue the case, and will show the clear intention on the part of the police to hide or destroy evidence.



In a separate item, Arutz-7 has learned that an anti-expulsion activist who was thrown out of his home on Thursday night was promptly arrested on Friday - for having organized demonstrations. The teenaged boy was shopping with his father for a Sabbath shirt in Jerusalem, when suddenly four GSS (Shabak) agents swooped down and arrested him. The boy's father went nearly berserk, screaming, "You're totally breaking me! Yesterday we were thrown out of our house, and now this!" He ran after the agents' car, kicking and yelling. Only shortly before the onset of the Sabbath was the boy released.