Police on Saturday night detained former Likud MK Yehuda Glick for questioning at the Walaja checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem on suspicion of trying to smuggle a Palestinian who apparently did not have a permit to cross into Israeli territory.
However, the police at the checkpoint had waved him through and he, on his own volition, stopped his car and told the police to check the Palestinian’s paperwork, Glick said Sunday.
“My wife and I saw a nice young man who asked for a ride,” he told Army Radio. “He said he was a Palestinian and had permits. We arrived at the checkpoint, and I asked for him to be checked. The officers there told me to pull over, and then one of them came over to me and said I was being detained.”
“I was forcibly dragged out of my car and was handcuffed and bundled into a police vehicle,” Glick told KAN News. “I behaved like a model citizen.”
According to the police, Glick became angry and began causing a disturbance when told to get out of his car.
“The police are lying,” Glick said. “I told the officer, ‘If you hand me my ID back, I will cooperate.’ Is that causing a disturbance? The allegations against me are absurd,” he added.
Glick’s wife, Hadas, said her husband asked the officer stationed at the checkpoint to check on the Palestinian hitchhiker, adding that Glick was summoned for questioning at the Atarot police station.
“We were at Har Gilo [a settlement near Jerusalem] on Shabbat,” she said. “When we left, we saw a young man standing next to the guard’s booth. He asked for a ride. We talked to him, and he said he wanted to go to Malha [a neighborhood in Jerusalem]. We asked him where he was from, and he said he was ‘a neighbor from the village of Walaja’ and that he had permits.”
Hadas Glick said when they arrived near the checkpoint, the officer there told them they could continue their journey and “in response, Yehudah indicated that he needed to check the passenger and the validity of his permits.”
When it was discovered that there was a problem with the Palestinian’s documents, the soldier informed them that they were being detained for attempting to smuggle in a Palestinian without proper documents, claiming that by law, they were not allowed to bring him to the checkpoint, she said. “We did not know that we needed to drop him off before the checkpoint and let him walk,” she added.
“It’s a very uneasy feeling, a terrible feeling,” Hadas Glick said. “We acted as any person would act.”
“During routine checks, Border Police officers stationed at Walaja checkpoint stopped a car containing an illegal alien without appropriate permits,” the Border Police said in a statement, according to KAN 11. “As the driver was informed he was being detained, he caused a disturbance and refused to cooperate with the officers. The driver was released on bail, and the illegal alien was transferred to Ofer Prison.”