Judge Joya Skappa-Shapiro, who serves on the Jerusalem magistrate court, has strongly criticized the police for their conduct in Judea and Samaria. In one instance, she even put her complaints into action by refusing to extend a suspect's preliminary sentence.
The case involved a 15-year-old who was arrested last Wednesday on suspicion of being involved in a number of so-called "price tag" incidents around the western Binyamin region. Yesterday (Monday), the teen was placed under house arrest after the court declined to uphold the charge against him.
During a discussion on his case last Thursday, Skappa-Shapira wrote that she does not completely accept the full motion, particularly "in light of the fact that, in another case where a sentence was extended in order to engage in similar questioning procedures by the same interrogation unit, in retrospect it turned out that the sentence was extended unnecessarily, and that these methods were carried out with no plausible explanation."
David Halevy, a member of the legal defense organization Honenu who represented the first youth, says he hopes that police will internalize this strong criticism. "We are talking about scandalous conduct on the part of the police which has become routine. The police come to the court to ask permission to hold a minor for a longer period, and state that they will question him but, in hindsight, it turns out that none of the questioning methods were used and the court was misled in order to justify the arrest."
He added, "I am happy that the court strongly criticized this conduct and instructed them to release my client. This decision speaks for itself, and the investigating authorities should take care to internalize it."