Police reject judgment that criminal suspects arrested 'because they were Arabs'
After Petah Tikva Magistrates' Court rules that four Arabs were arrested for criminal acts in the city based on their ethnicity, citing ‘no reasonable’ grounds for arrests, police seek to rebut the ruling, offering evidence to the contrary; ‘There were reasonable grounds.’
The judge concluded that the four suspects had been arrested purely because they were Arabs and that the Israel Police had justified their measures in the media by citing a phone call they received from a civilian reporting a burglary in the area.
In accordance with the ruling, the judge ordered that the four suspects, all of whom are in their 20s and 30s, be released until the commencement of an investigation on Wednesday.
“From studying the case it has become apparent that there is not a reasonable suspicion that criminal acts were carried out by the suspects. In essence, the entire reason for which they were detained lies in the fact that they are minorities.”
Responding to the damning ruling by the court, the police issued a statement defending the grounds on which they made the arrest after they received a phone call reporting break ins in the central city.
“Policemen arrived at the scene and located two adults sitting inside a vehicle in suspicious circumstances. The examination did not produce a satisfactory explanation for their presence at the scene. During a search of their vehicle a suspicious component was found which could have been a device used to hotwire a car,” the statement read.
“Due to the call made by the civilians that there were two more adults who entered an adjacent building, the police scoured the area and found another suspicious vehicle without an owner.”
Two men who were seen exiting the building and trying to leave the area were suspected by the police, the statement continued. “Even though they claimed that they didn’t know anything about the suspicious vehicle, a key to it was found in their possession. Therefore, the police officer concluded that there were reasonable grounds, according to the authority conferred upon him by law, to arrest them for the purpose of investigation and to bring them before a judge. The Israel Police will continue to crack down on criminal suspects as part of the struggle for the property and quality of the lives of the Petah Tikva residents.”
One of the arrested individuals, Adam Antar, said after his release that he and his friends arrived in the area to visit a friend in Petah Tikvah and that the arrests were completely unwarranted.
“We got to the place and within minutes the police arrested us and took us to the police station for no reason. We didn’t understand what they were arresting us for. We only realized today that they arrested us because we are Arabs. That is racism. Many Jews enter our neighborhood, and everyone respects them,” he said.
The judge concluded by stating that this constituted “a gross violation of reasonable suspicion required for a reasonable arrest or delay...This is a serious blow to the suspects’ rights of protection and fair proceedings.”
