Adalah Files Complaints Against Haifa Police Officers For Falsifying Reports and Conducting Illegitimate Arrests

Today, Adalah submitted two complaints to Mahash (the Ministry of Justice Police Investigation Unit) on behalf of Mr. Yoav Bar and attorney Iman Odah, a member of the Haifa Municipal Council. Haifa police officers beat and arrested both men on 27 December 2001 while dispersing a legal demonstration that was held to protest an appearance by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon scheduled that evening in Haifa.

The police interrogated Mr. Bar and Mr. Odah under suspicion of assaulting police officers in the course of their arrests. While the police released Mr. Odah a few hours after he was taken into custody, Mr. Bar was held in detention for three more days, with the approval of the Haifa Magistrate Court. On 28 December 2001, Adalah staff attorney Orna Kohn submitted an appeal against Mr. Bar’s detention to the Haifa District Court. Though subpoenaed, the police failed to appear at the hearing on 30 December; shortly after it was scheduled to begin, a police representative contacted Ms. Kohn and advised her that the police would not appear at the hearing, and that they intended to release Mr. Bar immediately.

The complaints submitted by Ms. Kohn were accompanied by live video footage taken before and during the arrests that confirmed that Mr. Bar and Mr. Odah did not assault police officers as the police had claimed. Rather, the video footage shows that Mr. Bar and Mr. Odah were themselves assaulted by the police. As Ms. Kohn stated in the complaints, the footage contradicts the version of events submitted to the Haifa Magistrate Court by the Haifa police in falsified reports, some of which were submitted by senior officers. These reports formed the basis for the decision to hold Mr. Bar in detention.

In the complaints, Ms. Kohn argued that the police had no legal basis to disperse the demonstrators, as they were holding a legal demonstration that did not disrupt the public order. Ms. Kohn also accused the police of using illegal means to disperse the demonstrators, since the police did not announce that the demonstration was illegal, nor did they warn the crowd before dispersing them, as is required by law. Further, Ms. Kohn argued that the police used excessive force during the dispersal of the demonstrators, and during the arrest of Mr. Bar and Mr. Odah, whom the police had no legal basis for arresting. In the complaint, Ms. Kohn notes that the officers prevented the two detainees from seeing their lawyers for over two hours while in the Haifa police station. Moreover, the police prevented Mr. Bar from receiving medical attention for chest pains resulting from abuse sustained during his arrest, throughout the entire 63 hours of his detention, despite an order issued by the Haifa Magistrate Court clearly stating that he should be moved to a hospital as soon as possible.