Last Friday, attorneys Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yitzhak Bam met for the first time with boys who were arrested on suspicion of involvement in a nationalistic incident whose details are banned from publication.
A number of youths had been arrested and lawyer meetings were prohibited by special order, canceled by the court only last Friday.
One of the detainee's parents told Arutz Sheva about their intense anguish following the arrest of their son. The boy's mother said, "He can't tell us anything, and that's the great fear; the uncertainty of what's happening to our son. He can't tell. He doesn't have the ability to put it out to the world after a week in the cellars of the Shin Bet. We do not know who's in charge of him, where he is, who cares for him, what he goes through, and what they're doing to him. How far can the imagination go in such situations?"
The boy's father added, "There is a law enforcement system, and I respect it. If there is anything against my son, let them say it so we can deal with it. We heard they prevented him from meeting with an attorney for a whole week, and this can not be. Even major criminals are given the right to meet with a lawyer," he said.
The father added, "I want to educate him to be a law abiding citizen, but how can you be a law abiding citizen when the state or its institutions do not give a person his basic rights as a human being? Even if a person did something wrong, he has human rights; society needs to rehabilitate him and my heart is not at rest. We're stuck in fog, it makes no sense. When they don't tell us what's going on with him for a whole week, it's an injustice and a crime. I have no idea how he's being interrogated, I can't conceive of something I do not know," he said. "That's the thing that bothers me most as a father, as a person; I don't know what is happening to him, I do not know where he is. They create a screen of uncertainty. I really feel that Kafka's trial is not some fantasy book written by Franz Kafka; this is a Kafka trial."
Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, who represents the boy, said, "The Shin Bet's conduct is disgraceful. In the middle of the night young people are taken, and this has become a permanent ritual, preventing them from meeting with an attorney, depriving them of legitimate rights.The right to consult with an attorney, to talk to an attorney, for rapists, for murderers, for drug dealers; everyone can meet with an attorney, all of them can open hearings, and only in such cases is the procedure different.Even if there are confessions as a result of this conduct, what will it be worth? In a democracy it's forbidden to play guessing games and it is impossible that the hilltop youth should have a special set of laws."
Attorney Yitzhak Bam, who met one of the youths on Friday, added: "I was shocked to learn that one of the detainees had his tefillin removed in the middle of prayer by force.I wonder if the Shin Bet agents happened to receive private lessons from Bogdan Chmielnicki (the barbaric Cossack who in 1648 led a rebellion against Polish rule of the Ukraine in which his men savagely massacred and cruelly tortured hundreds of Jews, ed.)"
The court allowed publication of the fact of the suspect's arrest only, yet prohibited publication of any investigation details.