The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ruled, as part of a settlement agreement, that the police will pay compensation of 10,000 shekels to right-wing activist Yedidia Epstein.
About a year ago, Epstein organized a demonstration of waving Israeli flags at the Nablus Gate in the Old City, during which he was arrested, interrogated at the police station and kept there overnight, sleeping on a bench. He was later taken to court with his hands and feet handcuffed.
After the incident, Epstein filed a lawsuit against the police, through attorney El-Adi Wiesel of Mhonnu.
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In the lawsuit, Attorney Wiesel describes the police's abuse of Epstein: "About an hour after the demonstration began, Epstein was arrested and taken to Shalem Station. Epstein was interrogated at the police station. After the interrogation ended, Epstein asked the investigator to release him home with a summons to appear at the hearing the next day - but the investigator refused his request.
""Despite the known legal provisions, the police officers at the station chose to keep Epstein in custody overnight, so that he could attend a hearing on his request for release under conditions that a police officer cannot set - as a detainee.".
""Worse still, not only did the police not release Epstein, but they did not even transfer him to overnight detention in a detention center or, unfortunately, arrange for him to be held in a cell at the station. Epstein was put in a cell at the station and was told by the police that he would spend the night there. Epstein asked the police to give him a blanket and a mattress so he could sleep, but the police told him that they apologized but that there was a shortage and that he would have to sleep without a mattress.
""Thus the minor found himself forced to spend the night trying to sleep in a cell at the police station, with no mattress to lie on and no blanket to cover himself with and escape the intense cold that prevailed in the station.".
Attorney Wiesel adds and details in the lawsuit how Epstein was "dried" in the detention cell, while fasting, and was even taken to the court hearing with his hands and feet handcuffed: "Even the next morning, the 17th of Tammuz fast, the defendants did not rush to promote the release of the minor - an ultra-Orthodox teenager who was forced, in vain, to spend additional hours of the fast under detention conditions - but he was dried in the cell and only towards noon did the defendant's guards arrive to take him to the hearing.
""Contrary to the law, the guards handcuffed the minor by his hands and feet and took him out in handcuffs onto the street. The minor was forced to appear in a public place, a city street, handcuffed like the last of the criminals - and not as a minor with no criminal record being taken to a hearing on a bail application. The minor was picked up from the street by the defendant's car and taken to court. The humiliation and harm to the minor did not stop in court either, but the guards led him, still handcuffed, into the courtroom.".
Attorney Wiesel welcomed the court's decision: "This is a lawsuit for a serious and unnecessary violation of the rights of a minor social activist. Outrageous conduct that is seen as deliberate abuse by the Israel Police against a minor, an idealist and social activist, who set himself the goal of working to restore a sense of security to the Gate of Damascus, and not accepting a state of affairs in which it is impossible to raise the Israeli flag in such a central place that stands in the heart of the Israeli capital.".
""However, strangely, the Israel Police have chosen, time and again, to place many difficulties on his lawful protests and to violate his basic rights to freedom of protest and movement. A violation of rights that reached its peak during the abusive arrest that is the subject of the lawsuit. We hope that the lawsuit we filed and the compensation that the police will pay as a result of it will help them come to their senses so that in the future, instead of fighting over the issues of the Israeli flag in the capital of Israel, they will fight the terror that seeks to prevent this.".
