5 officers charged with robbery, assault of Bedouins
Indictment filed by Police Internal Investigations Department against Border Guard policemen for attacking, blackmailing Bedouin residents in Eilat area
Five Border Guard police officers were charged Thursday with theft and assault of members of the Bedouin community in the Eilat area. The indictment, filed by the Police Internal Investigations Department, accuses each of the police officers of robbery, assault, extortion by threat and abuse of office.
According to the indictment, on December 12 three of the five entered a site inhabited by Bedouins in the Eilat area. They approached a caravan, home to three Bedouins, and ordered them to go outside and present their ID documents.
Two of the police officers then entered the caravan and beat the plaintiffs, and one of them took a cell-phone from one of the plaintiffs and pocketed it, saying it had been stolen.
More than a month later, on January 20, three of the accused entered a different caravan. One of the police officers accused one of the inhabitants of the caravan of stealing his cell phone, and beat him.
When the accused realized there were security cameras in the area, one of the police officers apologized and demanded that the plaintiffs destroy the cameras.
A third indictment described how two of the accused attempted to dissuade their victims from filing a complaint and to destroy evidence of the attack, and thus perverting the course of justice, according to the Police Internal Investigations Department.
