Israel police held Palestinian for 72 hours without questioning

An Israeli military tribunal recently ordered Israeli police to immediately release a West Bank man they had held for 72 hours without once questioning him.The Israeli police had also sought to keep Palestinian activist Murad Shtewi in custody an additional 10 days, prompting Israel Occupation Forces Col. Netanel Beniso to reprimand the police offices for violating what he said were the basic norms of law enforcement."Bringing [a suspect] before a judge must be done as soon as possible," Beniso said during Shtewi's appeal of his four-day remand extension. "The sequence of events as it emerges from the investigation file shows an outrageous waste of days in detention until actual questioning began. The Israel Police thus violated its basic obligation."Shtewi was arrested by Israeli soldiers December 20, on his way to a weekly march from his West Bank village of Kafr Kaddum to the nearby settlement of Kedumim, to protest the closing of Kaddum's access road.He was transferred to the custody of the Israel Police on suspicion he had entered a closed military zone and attempted to organize an unauthorized demonstration.Shtewi's family was never told he'd been arrested.His lawyer, Nery Ramati, asked a Military Court on December 22 to release Shtewi immediately. The next day, 72 hours after he was taken into custody, the Israeli police said at a hearing that they needed 10 more days to complete their investigation. During that hearing, it emerged that the police had yet to question Shtewi, even in a preliminary fashion. Israeli judge Yair Tirosh extended Shtewi's remand by four days, a ruling Ramati appealed to the Israeli Military Court of Appeals. During the appeal hearing, Israeli police said they had completed the organization and submitted the file to the Israeli military prosecution to decide whether to press charges. At that point, Beniso released Shtewi on the spot and chastised the police for detaining Shtewi, which he ruled was not justified by the evidence."The authority to detain is based on the inherent assumption that law enforcement is making proper and thoughtful use of the days in detention to investigate effectively," said Beniso. "In the absence of such questioning, the justification for detention falls away."He added that the police request to extend Shtewi's time in custody was "merely lip service," given that the police had initially insisted they needed 10 more days to complete their investigation, yet submitted the file to the prosecution less than a day later.Shin Bet officials said in response: "Shtewi was arrested on Friday (December 20) for alleged security crimes. Over the days after his arrest, several investigative activities took place, and on Sunday the military court extended his remand by four days for investigative purposes. Shtewi was questioned later that day."Shtewi's attorney, the statement said, then appealed the decision in court and, at his request, the case was examined by a military prosecutor who determined that further "significant investigation" was necessary and that therefore, his remand had to be extended. "Under these circumstances, the military appeals court felt that the investigation could be completed without Shtewi being held in custody, so it ordered his release, with restrictions," it concluded.This article was published by Haaretz