IDF top attorney calls 10 terrorists to verify sexual abuse charges against guards at Sde Teiman
IDF Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi on Sunday revealed to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that her staff called 10 times to released Palestinian terrorists to verify alleged physical abuse against them by IDF prison guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility.
The Jerusalem Post understands that the IDF Prosecution’s cases against various soldiers for abuse is not solely based on the terrorists’ narratives, but is rather virtually always also supported by forensic or medical evidence, often video evidence, and often evidence from fellow IDF soldiers or commanders.
Despite that overlapping evidence, the revelation of the IDF reaching out to terrorists for information against its own soldiers is bound to generate significant political blowback.
It is true that no legal case can be made without having the victim present their narrative, but this specific framework of terrorist versus soldier is highly controversial, especially with the war still ongoing.
Further, she revealed that there are 74 incidents of alleged abuse of some thousands of Palestinian detainees who passed through Sde Teiman which are being probed, regarding which five indictments have already been issued.
Defending the guards’ arrest
Tomer Yerushalmi also defended the military police decision to arrive to arrest the 10 suspects-prison guards with masks in order to protect their identities, though the picture that this presented seemed to inflict an additional stain of wrongdoing on the prison guards even before they were brought to trial.
Regarding the leak of a video of five of the suspects-prison guards allegedly sodomizing a Palestinian detainee, which could be viewed as a violation of the suspects’ rights to only have such evidence presented to the public at trial, the IDF MAG said she had stood down from probing the issue given that Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara was already investigating it.
Despite the anger at the leaker of the video, as a matter of substance, the IDF pretrial court has ruled that the video supports a potential conviction of the suspects at trial.
Tomer Yerushalmi pushed back hard on attacks on her staff and the IDF police, saying these harmed the State of Israel, because they undermine perceptions of whether Israel’s legal system is independent in the eyes of the INternational Criminal Court and other courts.
Such international courts are more likely to prosecute Israelis if they find that the Israeli legal establishment is not independent.
While many Israelis have been angry with the IDF Prosecution for probing its own soldiers, globally even Israeli allies have slammed the IDF Prosecution as being too slow and tentative in moving forward with such charges.
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