Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) has filed a lawsuit against Border Police Officer Tzion Saturlehil, who allegedly attacked INN TV reporter Chizki Ezra almost a year ago, at the entrance to Rachel’s Tomb.
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The second defendant in the case is Border Police spokesman Moshe Pinchi, whom Arutz Sheva accuses of lying about the incident and defaming Ezra. Attorney Benny Levin, who works with the Yesha Human Rights Organization, filed the suit.
A video shot by Ezra during the incident shows Saturlehil approaching the reporter after he noticed he was being filmed. The screen goes black when Ezra is attacked and his camera is broken.
After attacking Ezra, the court papers say, Saturlehil went on to detain him and interrogate him for two hours. In the course of this time Saturlehil admitted that he had acted illegally, apologized to Ezra and promised to compensate him for breaking the camera. Saturlehil’s commander even offered Ezra “preferential treatment” at the entrance to Rachel’s Tomb if he agreed not to file a complaint in the Department for Investigation of Police Officers.
Ezra filed a complaint with the Department for Investigation of Police Officers, which eventually led to a serious indictment against the policeman.
'A complete fabrication'
However, Ezra learned that while the Border Police officers on the ground knew full well that their comrade attacked Ezra, Border Police spokesman Moshe Pinchi gave journalists a completely different version of the events. In a formal press release, Pinchi informed reporters that Ezra had taken advantage of his status as a journalist in order to take part in disturbing the peace and breaking the law.
This is a complete fabrication, the lawsuit says, and it has caused Ezra real professional damage.
Attached to the lawsuit as evidence is Ezra’s video of the incident (up to the moment in which the camera was broken), as well as media reports which included Pinchi’s false version of the event and a recording of a phone conversation with Pinchi in which he admits that he disseminated the false version because his commanders “expect you to defend them like a lawyer and that you will be on their side, as you know.”
The lawsuit specifies that the defendants compensate Ezra for the broken camera, the unjustified detainment and the substantial damage due to libel for a total of NIS 125,000.
Arutz Sheva’s Ezra said that the affair involved “serious damage to my journalistic work, and the dissemination of lies by those who are supposed to safeguard the law and be a dependable and objective source of information.”