Military Advocate General Corps staff called 10 released Palestinian terrorists to verify alleged physical abuse against them by IDF prison guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility.
IDF MAG Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi made the revelation on Sunday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The Jerusalem Post understands that the IDF prosecution’s cases against various soldiers for abuse is not 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 soldiers or commanders.
The Post understands that none of the terrorists answered the calls, and no evidence was gained from them.
Despite that broader evidentiary picture, the revelation of the IDF reaching out to terrorists for information against its own soldiers is bound to generate significant political blowback.
Defending the guards' arrest
It is true that no legal case can be made without having the victim present their narrative, but this specific framework of “terrorist vs soldier” is highly controversial, especially with the ongoing war.
She revealed that there are 74 incidents of alleged abuse of thousands of detainees who passed through Sde Teiman that are being probed; five indictments have been issued.
Tomer-Yerushalmi defended the Military Police decision to arrive at Sde Teiman that fateful day to arrest the 10 suspects-prison guards with masks – to protect their identities, though the picture that this presented seemed to inflict an additional stain of wrongdoing on the prison guards, before they have even been brought to trial.
Some time later, a video was leaked of five of the suspects-prison guards allegedly sodomizing a Palestinian detainee, which could be seen as a violation of the suspects’ rights to only have such evidence presented to the public at trial. The 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 towards her staff and the IDF police, saying these harmed the State of Israel because they undermine perceptions of whether the country’s legal system is independent in the eyes of international courts, including the International Criminal Court. Such courts are more likely to prosecute Israelis if they find that the local legal establishment is not independent.
While many Israelis have been angry with the IDF prosecution for probing its own soldiers, even Israel’s allies have slammed the prosecution as too slow and tentative in moving forward with such charges.
According to a source, during the FADC meeting, which was classified, a number of MKs condemned the incitement against Tomer-Yerushalmi. These MKs included FADC chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud), Benny Gantz (National Unity), Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid), and Efrat Rayten (Labor).
Others, including Likud MK Tally Gotliv, criticized the MAG for not making sure that the arrests remained classified so as not to endanger Israelis being held captive by Hamas in Gaza. Gotliv also accused Tomer-Yerushalmi for leaking part of the investigation, but did not present proof of her claim.
On Sunday, the military court granted the IDF prosecution’s request to extend until Tuesday the detentions of five of the prison guards suspected of sodomy. It said, at the same time, that the prosecution will not oppose starting a social worker evaluation process of the prison guards for the possibility of releasing them to house arrest or some other situation short of full detention.
The fact that the prosecution took that position suggests it is close to completing key aspects of its investigation, possibly even closer to filing indictments.
The IDF court said it would defer until Tuesday the question of whether the five suspects could be released with or without a social worker evaluation.
On July 29, the 10 were arrested for a mix of alleged sodomy and beatings. Two were quickly released and three more were released some days later, after their detention was initially extended by an IDF pretrial court.
Since then, the remaining five have had their detention extended several times.
Multiple times, the IDF pretrial court – and once even the IDF appeals court – ruled in favor of the prosecution, and alluded to the case being much stronger than has been leaked to the public to date.
The Post understands that some of the evidence includes a majority of the medical reports and medical experts’ testimony, as well as video footage of aspects of the alleged torture.
The defense noted that at least two of the medical reports are ambiguous about what the cause is of the detainee’s physical harm.
The second of these reports from Chen Kugel, chief of the State Forensics Institute, could be potentially more damaging to the prosecution’s case.
On the flip side, Kugel said the ambiguity came from the fact that he neither got to see photographic evidence nor did he get to examine the detainee, whereas some of the pro-prosecution medical reports came from medical experts who did.
It was unclear whether there was photographic evidence of the detainee’s rectum, but sources indicated there was no photographic evidence of the detainees’ frontal private areas, and that they did not know why this was so.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the hearing calling on the military prosecutor to release the suspects. Protesters called the arrest delusional and said it should not have happened during the war, according to organizers.
Earlier Sunday, a handful of Im Tirtzu activists protested outside the Knesset ahead of the MAG’s arrival.
“The Advocate General undermines public trust in the military, and damages the soldiers’ motivation,” said Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Jerafi, who demanded that she be fired.
Eliav Breuer and Eve Young contributed to this report.