Adalah: Investigate Police Assault on Nakba Day Demonstrators in Israel

On 15 June 2011, Adalah submitted a detailed complaint to the Ministry of Justice's Police Investigation Unit ("Mahash") to demand the opening of a criminal investigation against Mr. Kobi Bachar, the Deputy Commander of the Galilee District Police, and police officers who assaulted demonstrators during the Nakba Day protests on 15 May 2011, near the destroyed village of Kufr Bir'am in the north of Israel.

In the complaint, Adalah Attorney Orna Kohn argued that both the police break up of the demonstration and their attacks on protestors violated the law. Firstly, the demonstration held did not require the issuance of a permit. A permit is required for a demonstration in which the number of participants exceeds fifty, occurs in an open space, and includes either a speech on a political issue or a rally. In the absence of these conditions, a demonstration is legal, even if an official permit was not obtained. The complaint also emphasized that the demonstrators' representatives attempted to talk to the police to calm the situation and avoid violence, but were completely ignored. Rather, the police arrested and assaulted persons who tried to talk to them to calm the situation.

Secondly, the complaint described the police forces' illegal behavior during the arrest of the seven protesters and their on-site detention, as well as in the police cars and in the police station in Safed. The police dragged some of the detainees on the ground and deliberately tied them together painfully. The police also sprayed "pepper spray" directly to protestors' faces and eyes and were indifferent to their screams of pain and their appeals for help to get water to wash their faces and eyes from the burning spray. The complaint also cited the obscene insults and racist statements uttered by the police against the protesters and detainees during the break up of the demonstration and the arrests, and even in the police station in Safed.

Further, the complaint stressed the seriousness of the police attack on Attorney Maysa Urshaid of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and another person at the Hiram junction close to the protest site on the same day. Attorney Urshaid was acting as a legal observer at the demonstration; her only fault was that she approached the police officer to inquire about why he announced that the demonstration taking place was illegal. The police assault on her was captured on video, which shows clearly that Bachar slapped her face without any overtures from her after she had spoken with another police officer.

The complaint demanded the opening of a criminal investigation against the police officers who assaulted the demonstrators and Mr. Kobi Bachar personally; and the indictment of those found responsible and their removal from office until the end of legal proceedings against them.

The Complaint (Hebrew)

For more information, see also: "Adalah: Magistrates' Court Released Six Detainees of the Nakba Demonstrations in Israel to House Arrest for Four Days," 18 May 2011:
http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=18-1_05_11