العربية
HE
العربية
HE
On 11 May 2004 HaMoked submitted a suit for damages following a serious incident that occurred in the winter of 1998, in which Border Police officers abused three Palestinian minors in Jerusalem. The Border Police officers forcibly placed the youths in a patrol vehicle where they were beaten vigorously, forced to sing songs praising the Border Police, and eventually thrown out of the vehicle at a great distance from their homes. Two of the officers were convicted of criminal offenses following the incident, and two others were convicted in police disciplinary proceedings. No proceedings were initiated against other police officers involved in the abuse.
The criminal and disciplinary proceedings against the Border Police officers paint an alarming picture regarding the behavior of the police: officers are sent into the field without an understanding of their function and without proper supervision of their actions, and they abuse their authority. The proceedings once again revealed the grave norms of disruption of investigations by the Police Investigation Unit and coordination of false testimonies. Accordingly, in addition to the officers themselves, the state was also named in this suit, both on account of its vicarious liability for the officers’ actions and on account of its direct liability in view of the failures in the training and supervision of the police.
On 25 July 2006 the magistrate’s court issued its judgment in the suit. The judgment was given by way of a compromise, in which the Respondents were obliged to pay compensation totaling NIS 39,000 to the Plaintiffs, not including attorneys’ fees and legal expenses.
