Five IDF soldiers indicted for beating Arab prisoners

The two Palestinian detainees, a father and son, were allegedly assaulted by men from the Nahal Haredi battalion.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Five Israeli soldiers were indicted Thursday for allegedly beating up a Palestinian father and son they had detained. The two captives posed no threat, having been blindfolded and handcuffed.

The military prosecution is charging all five soldiers with abuse and aggravated assault. They allegedly punched and hit the men with blunt objects, hurting one so badly that he needed to be taken for medical care. According to the charges, the soldiers forced the son to watch his father getting his ribs broken, and the beatings were documented.

Two of the soldiers are also being indicted for obstruction of justice, as they allegedly coordinated their stories before being interrogated.

All five will be held in custody until the end of the legal proceedings against them.

The first lieutenant in charge of the soldiers was also charged in a separate case for not preventing the beating.

The incident took place in December, a week after two soldiers from the battalion were killed by terrorist Asam Barghouti in a drive-by shooting at the Givat Assaf Junction in Samaria.

Although the military police investigated the possibility that the men’s violence had been motivated by revenge for murders, Ha’aretz reported that the indictment does not mention the terror attack. However, the report notes that the military’s defense team explicitly referred to it, saying that charges should not have been brought because the soldiers “were put in an impossible situation … of arresting the terrorists who were involved in the murder of their friends.”

MK Betzalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) reacted to the indictment, saying that the military prosecution has “lost its mind and is hurting the IDF.”

“Criminal prosecution and the demand for active prison sentences for combat soldiers who saw the bodies of their comrades after they were murdered and participated in the arrest of the terrorist accomplices is unacceptable stupidity. Brave IDF soldiers whom we send to fight in our name against a cruel enemy deserve backing even if they erred and must not to be abandoned in the name of distorted legal morality.”