Noam Federman and the Jerusalem District Court are in a battle of minds over the conditions of his house arrest. On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Yaakov Turkel sharply criticized the lower court for acceding to a police request to keep Federman in custody until the end of the proceedings against him. Turkel wrote that the charges against Federman of possessing grenades have nothing to do with the case at hand - namely, that known as the Bat Ayin conspiracy - and that the only evidence against him regarding that case is \"unreliable and without basis.\" \"No one should be imprisoned for the sins of someone else,\" Turkel wrote, and agreed only that the charges against Federman justified a form of house arrest.
It was therefore left to District Court Justice Miriam Mizrachi - the subject of the above criticism - to determine the terms of the house arrest. On Friday, she ruled that Federman should be confined to a friend\'s home in the Golan Heights. Federman, however, buoyed by the Supreme Court\'s position, insisted on living with his own family in Hevron, \"offering\" to be bound to his home between midnight and 6 AM. Mizrachi refused, and ordered him back to jail to come up with a better plan. Federman appealed again to the Supreme Court, noting that Justice Mizrachi has a \"bad\" history: Ten years ago, she ordered Federman held in custody until the end of the proceedings in a case in which he was later totally acquitted - and more recently, she was rebuked by Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner for illegally ordering another defendant held throughout the proceedings.
The situation at present is that Federman is still in prison, awaiting a final decision from the Supreme Court on the terms of his house arrest.